Bio-Rad Receives “Green” My Green Lab Certification
September 19, 2024
Bio-Rad is proud to announce that our Life Science labs in Pleasanton, California have received a My Green Lab Certification, joining four other labs at Bio-Rad with a certification. My Green Lab Certification is considered the "gold standard" for laboratory sustainability best practices around the world.
The effort to obtain the certification was led by Gail Higginbotham, a NorCal Site Operations Manager, and her operations team, including Zack Wiegel and Ken Sim. Zack is a lab manager at the site and says the certification reflects the Company’s sustainability goals. “This was a very important initiative for us because it connects to our core value of sustainability, and it enables everyone in our labs to take an active role in reducing our environmental footprint.”
After receiving a rating in the 50% range on the assessment from My Green Lab earlier this year, the Operations Team began exploring ways to expand their existing sustainability initiatives and educate coworkers about the improvements. "After receiving the initial rating," Zack says, "Gail drafted up a plan with Ken and myself to make Pleasanton more sustainable and educate our teams about how they could help."
Efforts included the launch of a glove recyling program, bolstering the labs’ waste management, changing the freezer temperature from –80 degrees Celsius to –70, installing occupancy light sensors, and even changing sink aerators to ensure water is used efficiently. The culmination of these efforts was a new rating of 83% for the lab in August, which landed Bio-Rad the Green level certification (levels go Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Green).
Zack and Ken were also able to glean best practices from Bio-Rad's Clinical Diagnostics Group (CDG), which sits above the Life Science labs and is also My Green Labs certified. "The CDG group was great to bounce ideas off of because they actually went through the implementations first,” Zack says. “It was nice to work on it together and have kind of a playbook to base our efforts around."
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