2020 Freezer Challenge Winners
Two hundred and eighteen (218) laboratories from around the world representing 88 different research institutions competed in the 2020 International Laboratory Freezer Challenge. Now in its fourth year as a program coordinated by My Green Lab and I2SL, the Freezer Challenge encourages researchers to implement a variety of best practices related to cold storage management. Labs receive points for taking sustainable actions related to their cold storage units, including actions that promote energy efficiency, sample accessibility, and sample integrity. Winners were determined based on the number of points they earned as well as the amount of energy they saved. Congratulations to the winners of this year's Freezer Challenge!
Organizational winners of the 2020 Freezer Challenge are:
In addition, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign would have earned a three-peat this year for the Top Academic Organization based on points, so they are receiving the Winning Streak Award for 2020.
AstraZeneca saved an incredible 1.1 million kWh/year through their actions for the Freezer Challenge this year, with eight of their sites around the world participating. The Whitehead Institute and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology saved an estimated 189,000 kWh/year, and the National Institutes of Health saved 133,000 kWh/year.
Honorable mentions in the Top Organization Category go to the University of Alabama Birmingham, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and Charles River Laboratories.
Individual laboratory winners of the 2020 Freezer Challenge are:
Honorable mentions in the Individual Lab Category are all academic labs: the BioSpecimen Processing Facility at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill; the Biology Teaching Laboratories at the University of California Santa Cruz; and the Van Der Pol Lab at the University of Alabama Birmingham. These labs went above and beyond in their efforts to improve cold storage management and to reduce the environmental impact of their research.
Congratulations to all our Freezer Challenge winners! Together, the 2020 Freezer Challenge participants saved a combined ~3.2 million kWh/year, up from 2.4 million kWh/year in 2019. This is equivalent to reducing carbon emissions by 2,260 metric tons per year, or removing 360 passenger vehicles from the road for a year!
Winners were honored at the 2020 Virtual International Institute for Sustainable Labs Conference in October, 2020, and their accomplishments have been featured in an an article 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, Stirling Ultracold, PHCbi, and Thermo Fisher Scientific.
Organizational winners of the 2020 Freezer Challenge are:
- The Whitehead Institute and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- AstraZeneca
- The National Institutes of Health
In addition, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign would have earned a three-peat this year for the Top Academic Organization based on points, so they are receiving the Winning Streak Award for 2020.
AstraZeneca saved an incredible 1.1 million kWh/year through their actions for the Freezer Challenge this year, with eight of their sites around the world participating. The Whitehead Institute and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology saved an estimated 189,000 kWh/year, and the National Institutes of Health saved 133,000 kWh/year.
Honorable mentions in the Top Organization Category go to the University of Alabama Birmingham, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and Charles River Laboratories.
Individual laboratory winners of the 2020 Freezer Challenge are:
- The Learning and Research Laboratory at the University of Bristol
- The Janssen Biotherapeutics (JBIO) Lab at Janssen Pharmaceuticals in La Jolla, CA
- The Laboratory of Cell Biology at the Center for Cancer Research of the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health
Honorable mentions in the Individual Lab Category are all academic labs: the BioSpecimen Processing Facility at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill; the Biology Teaching Laboratories at the University of California Santa Cruz; and the Van Der Pol Lab at the University of Alabama Birmingham. These labs went above and beyond in their efforts to improve cold storage management and to reduce the environmental impact of their research.
Congratulations to all our Freezer Challenge winners! Together, the 2020 Freezer Challenge participants saved a combined ~3.2 million kWh/year, up from 2.4 million kWh/year in 2019. This is equivalent to reducing carbon emissions by 2,260 metric tons per year, or removing 360 passenger vehicles from the road for a year!
Winners were honored at the 2020 Virtual International Institute for Sustainable Labs Conference in October, 2020, and their accomplishments have been featured in an an article 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, Stirling Ultracold, PHCbi, and Thermo Fisher Scientific.
