Make A Plan, Form A Team

Welcome to this next installment of the Freezer Challenge Blog! You'll periodically see messages such as this between now and the end of the challenge on July 1. We now have over 150 labs from 18 different countries participating in this year's competition. Amazing!

There are three months left of the Freezer Challenge, still giving you plenty of time to implement sustainable, efficient, and energy saving actions with your lab's refrigerators and freezers. Remember, you don't have to do all of the actions on the scoresheet - do what makes sense for your lab, what you have time for, or what you wish to prioritize. The more actions you take, the higher your score (and likely higher energy savings too).

If you haven't already, it may be helpful to make a plan with your lab on how to tackle the remaining three months of the Freezer Challenge. And if you haven't yet enlisted others in your lab to help you, now is a great time to reach out! Here are some ideas of how to approach the next few months:

• Establish a "Freezer Friday" each month until the end of the challenge, and spend the afternoon completing scoresheet actions
• Divide & conquer: ask other lab members to each go through their own freezer boxes, discarding unneeded or expired samples (ask everyone to keep a record!) by a deadline you set - then add those group actions to the scoresheet
• Set aside a particular week where you and your lab team will focus on all your lab's cold storage at once
• Commit to spending just one hour a week on Freezer Challenge actions

The bottom line is, do what works for you and your schedule!

The Freezer Challenge scoresheet is designed so you can return to it as many times as you want between now and July 1. When you try to access your scoresheet, if you get a message from Brilliant Assessments saying you can no longer access your scoresheet, this probably means you accidentally submitted it back to us too early. Email [email protected] if you need us to reopen your scoresheet so you can continue editing!

Good luck!