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Sustainable labs

Green Accreditations 

What Are They?

Green accreditations are certifications awarded to organisations, including laboratories, that meet specific environmental and sustainability standards. These standards aim to reduce environmental impact, ensure regulatory compliance, and promote sustainable practices. For laboratories, green accreditations can involve measures such as reducing energy and water consumption, minimising waste, using eco-friendly materials, and implementing efficient processes.

Leaf award logo

Why are they important?

Accredited programmes create uniform standards that can help educational institutions create safer, more efficient, and diverse working environments. Universities must enforce these standards to address targets, including net zero by 2030.

Green accreditations are vital for laboratories because they aim to minimise the carbon footprint of lab operations through sustainable practises. Whilst providing other benefits such as cost savings, increased research output and career development and may more. Accredited labs can also conduct transparent environmental audits, identify areas for improvement, and gain recognition for their efforts.

Sustainability frameworks update their criteria to align with global goals. By adopting sustainable practices, and maintaining accreditations over time, our labs contribute to the university’s net zero targets and showcase our commitment to environmental responsibility.

How does my lab achieve green accreditations?

If you have a new lab space that is not registered with a green accredited programme, you can get started by:

  1. Forming Your Lab Cluster: Include both technical and research staff to ensure best practices.
  2. Determining Your Category & Certification Channel: Based on the lab's functions and nature of work. See our SharePoint site for guidance on how to determine your lab space and the right certification channel for you.
  3. Contacting Sustainable Labs: It is important you let us know about your lab space and chosen certification channel as this information feeds into the university’s wider sustainability goals.

Join our Teams channel and bookmark our SharePoint site for guidance and resources to support your applications.

Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF)

LEAF, developed by University College London's Sustainability Team, is an online green lab accreditation programme supporting sustainable and cost-effective lab management, teaching, and research. It covers waste, water, energy, travel, research quality, and procurement. Baseline calculators help users quantify the impact of their actions by comparing financial costs and carbon consumption before and after implementing sustainable practices.

Participants can earn gold, silver, or bronze awards, reviewed by the Sustainable Labs team, based on adherence to LEAF criteria. Labs must enrol by contacting sustainablelabs@exeter.ac.uk and reapply every two years to maintain their status. In March 2022, all applicable lab spaces at UoE achieved LEAF certification, making UoE the second institution to reach this 100% milestone. In 2025, LEAF developers updated the criteria to improve sustainability efforts, now live on our LEAF portal. We urge all LEAF users to work towards reapplying for the updated criteria to show your commitment to sustainability. Below are some quick links for LEAF. More resources and information are available on our SharePoint site.

LEAF Portal

LEAF User Guide

Green DiSC (Software Sustainability Institute)

Computing is an essential component of modern research, and it comes with significant, but not always well-understood, environmental impacts. With the urgency of the climate crisis, it is becoming increasingly apparent to scientists using computing that the resulting environmental effects should be taken into account and mitigated where possible. Green DiSC is a new sustainability certification scheme designed to help research groups and institutions mitigate the environmental impacts of their computing activities. Similarly to LEAF, there are bronze, silver and gold criteria that follow key principles. The scheme is marked by peer review, so participating lab spaces can gain a greater insight into a wider range of sustainability practises during their review of applications from other institutions, with an added bonus being the growth of a friendly community of Green DiSC reviewers.

We recommend lab spaces that are no longer applicable for the LEAF award to assess their suitability for the Green DiSC criteria. While it primarily targets digital spaces, some dry lab spaces may also qualify. For more information on enrolling, you can go to our SharePoint site.

If you are trialling the Green DiSC certification, please let us know for our records, we'd love to hear from you! 

Sustainable Labs Team

Keep in Touch

Join our Teams channel

Bookmark our SharePoint site 

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