Fol­low­ing an end-to-end review of all work­flow process­es at our Foren­sic & Ana­lyt­i­cal Sci­ence Ser­vice Drug Tox­i­col­o­gy Unit, a lab­o­ra­to­ry-wide tech­nol­o­gy replace­ment and renew­al plan was devel­oped. A key part of the renew­al plan was how the DTU team could reduce con­sum­able usage and waste pro­duc­tion, and improve the over­all envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the lab.

The DTU bud­get showed large year on year expen­di­tures on paper, sin­gle use plas­tics, sol­vents and waste dis­pos­al. To achieve greater envi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­abil­i­ty, the reduced use of con­sum­ables was empha­sised at every oppor­tu­ni­ty dur­ing ana­lyt­i­cal instru­men­ta­tion imple­men­ta­tion and work­flow design phas­es of the renew­al plan.

The team has suc­cess­ful­ly improved the envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the lab­o­ra­to­ry result­ing in the recur­rent annu­al sav­ing of waste of 8.4 tonnes, equiv­a­lent to 9.7 tonnes of car­bon diox­ide and sig­nif­i­cant recur­rent bud­get savings.

This project demon­strates a com­mit­ment to envi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able prac­tices and a dri­ve for con­tin­u­al process improvement.