2019 Freezer Challenge Winners
Over 400 labs representing 41 organizations around the world competed in the Freezer Challenge, which encouraged researchers to implement best practices around cold storage management. Labs received points for taking actions such as properly maintaining freezers and refrigerators, discarding old samples, and retiring unneeded units. Winners were determined based on the number of points they received as well as the amount of energy they saved.
The organizational winners of the Freezer Challenge were:
The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign saved an estimated 160,000 kWh/year, Charles River Laboratories, Mattawan saved an estimated 423,000 kWh/year, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention saved an estimated 300,000 kWh/year.
Honorable mention goes to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Charles River Laboratories, Leiden, and the National Institutes of Health.
The individual laboratory winners were:
Honorable mention in the individual lab category goes to the Ming Lab, Department of Plant Biology, managed by Julie Nguyen at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, The Janssen Immunology Biology Lab at La Jolla, California, led by Steven Nguyen, Scientist, Immunology Therapeutic Area, Janssen Research & Development LLC, and The Laboratory Research & Reference Branch in the Division of STD Prevention from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These labs went above and beyond in their efforts to improve cold storage management and to reduce the environmental impact of their labs.
Of all the participating labs, the UNC BioSpecimen Processing Facility_Basta, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the RRC UI Health Biorepository discarded the most samples.
Congratulations to all of our Freezer Challenge winners!! Together, 2019 Freezer Challenge participants saved ~2.4 million kWh/year. The energy savings realized from this Challenge are equivalent to reducing carbon emissions by ~1,700 metric tons.
All Freezer Challenge winners were honored at the I2SL conference in Denver, CO and their accomplishments were published in Nature!
The Freezer Challenge is a joint program run by My Green Lab and the International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories (I2SL), and was made possible through the generosity of Eppendorf, Panasonic, Stirling Ultracold and Thermo Fisher Scientific.
Over 400 labs representing 41 organizations around the world competed in the Freezer Challenge, which encouraged researchers to implement best practices around cold storage management. Labs received points for taking actions such as properly maintaining freezers and refrigerators, discarding old samples, and retiring unneeded units. Winners were determined based on the number of points they received as well as the amount of energy they saved.
The organizational winners of the Freezer Challenge were:
- The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
- Charles River Laboratories, Mattawan
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign saved an estimated 160,000 kWh/year, Charles River Laboratories, Mattawan saved an estimated 423,000 kWh/year, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention saved an estimated 300,000 kWh/year.
Honorable mention goes to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Charles River Laboratories, Leiden, and the National Institutes of Health.
The individual laboratory winners were:
- The Multiple Sclerosis and Parkinson’s Tissue Bank, Imperial College London
- The Biology/Automated Strain Engineering Lab, Amyris, Inc.
- IRAT and CCB Labs from the Division of Laboratory Sciences, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Honorable mention in the individual lab category goes to the Ming Lab, Department of Plant Biology, managed by Julie Nguyen at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, The Janssen Immunology Biology Lab at La Jolla, California, led by Steven Nguyen, Scientist, Immunology Therapeutic Area, Janssen Research & Development LLC, and The Laboratory Research & Reference Branch in the Division of STD Prevention from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These labs went above and beyond in their efforts to improve cold storage management and to reduce the environmental impact of their labs.
Of all the participating labs, the UNC BioSpecimen Processing Facility_Basta, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the RRC UI Health Biorepository discarded the most samples.
Congratulations to all of our Freezer Challenge winners!! Together, 2019 Freezer Challenge participants saved ~2.4 million kWh/year. The energy savings realized from this Challenge are equivalent to reducing carbon emissions by ~1,700 metric tons.
All Freezer Challenge winners were honored at the I2SL conference in Denver, CO and their accomplishments were published in Nature!
The Freezer Challenge is a joint program run by My Green Lab and the International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories (I2SL), and was made possible through the generosity of Eppendorf, Panasonic, Stirling Ultracold and Thermo Fisher Scientific.
