Announcing Janetos Climate Action Prize Winner

Achieving sustainability in BU research labs with practical strategies.

Congratulations to this year’s Anthony Janetos Climate Action Prize winner for one of the first-ever Campus Climate Lab projects on the BU Medical Campus!

The annual award, celebrating student contributions to the project with the biggest potential impact on BU’s Climate Action Plan, goes to Carly Golden, PhD student, Molecular & Translational Medicine. The Janetos Prize review committee also applauds the leadership of faculty mentor Angie Serrano (Assistant Professor, Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, Vascular Biology) and team members Saylor Williams (Serrano Lab Manager) and Greg Miller (Center for Regenerative Medicine Lab Manager).

A startling statistic was a big driver for the research team: Globally, research labs produce billions of pounds of plastic waste each year. Their goal was to cut down on biomedical waste at BU, working with labs at the Center for Regenerative Medicine (CReM) to adopt more sustainable practices — through recycling, reusing materials, and reducing energy consumption. And their early efforts have put up some impressive numbers: 796 pounds of plastic recycled so far, including pipette tips, media bottles, and PCR plates. And working with the vendor Polycarbin allows them to remanufacture many of these single-use plastics back into new lab products. The Styrofoam for mailing reagents is also being recycled now, about 100 boxes and counting.

Read the full story in The Brink.

Campus Climate Lab is led by the BU Institute for Global Sustainability in collaboration with BU Sustainability and the Office of Research.