Développement Durable

Sustainable Development Axis

This axis aims to provide opportunities to share ideas for sustainability to improve our consumption habits in the laboratory and in everyday life, to analyze and understand climate change, and to reflect and act collectively on what we can do. More contents can be found here!

Upcoming events

ENS Chemistry Digital Cleanup Day: Mar. 10-16

Les journées RRRR ‘Réduire-Réparer-Réemployer-Recycler’ Mar. 18-20, Atrium (SU)

Next luncheon meeting: Mar. 26 (Wed) 12:30, « Biodiversity »

City Nature Challenge 2025: Apr. 25-28

 

Guidelines by Axe DD

General

• The target of carbon footprint in France is 0 tCO₂e per person per year (work + private life) by 2050
• Past and current situation – Our World in Data
• CNRS schéma directeur développement durable et responsabilité sociétale (Fr)

 Business trip

• Target a team quota of 5 tCO₂e per person per yearfor business travels of lab members as well as invited researchers
• Calculate CO₂emission for each travel by the simulator of Labos 1point5
• Choose trains over airplanesfor trajectories less than 1000 km, or whenever the choice of train adds no more than 3 hours to the total travel time

e.g. Round trip Paris – Bordeaux (1 200 km): 0.3 tCO₂e by airplane, 0.004 tCO₂e by train)

e.g. Round trip Paris – New York (11 900 km): 1.8 tCO2e by airplane

Meals & drinks

• Choose vegetarian option for convivial meals, especially when financed by the laboratory or by the department
• Avoid buying drinks/foods in plastic bottles/containers
• Ask the participants to bring their own cups to share drinks
• Try to reduce the consumption of coffee
• You want to reduce the carbon footprint of your food? Focus on what you eat, not whether your food is local

Purchase/donation of lab/office materials

• Consult the sites below before purchasing materials:

Dons des biens mobiliers du Domaine  (Fr)

CNRS Bourse aux matériels (Fr) via Janus

Rewake

Plastic collection

• Collection of hard plastics for recycle (Les bouchons de l’espoir)

Heating system/air conditioning

• Keep doors closed when the rooms are air conditioned
• Turn off the heater/cooler during the night and weekend (especially offices)
• Set at a reasonable temperature

Informatics

• 75% of environmental footprint of informatics is from the fabrication process –> The best is to reduce purchase
• Reuse old computers by running Linux
• Do not send emails with large attachment files, use File Sender
• Turn off camera during video conferences/meetings when possible
• Give a try to the search engine Ecosia
• Unsubscribe from newsletters you never read
• Trash old emails
• Turn off devices during night, weekend
• Outil informatique & impact environnemental (INSMI, June 2022) (Fr)

Deep freezer

• -80 °C freezer consumes electricity more than a house of 4 people
• Set the temperature to -70 °C when possible (30% less energy consumption)
• Tidy and remove old samples
• Best practices included in the Freezer Challenge

Resources

• Resources for sustainable laboratory practice – Royal Society of Chmistry
• Discover other interesting links here