A Slow But Growing Push for Greener Laboratories

Ilyssa Gordon, M.D., is a gastrointestinal pathologist by profession and an environmentalist by passion.

When she joined the staff of the Cleveland Clinic four years ago, she decided to delve into the guts of its wide-ranging hospital laboratory operations, trying to determine how it could be greener and therefore more efficient—both operationally and fiscally.

The Cleveland Clinic had actually opened a new main hospital lab about a year before Gordon was hired on, a state-of-the-art facility that boasted a certification from the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED. But that honorific was primarily due to the lab's construction, not necessarily its day-to-day operations.

"I met with my institute chair, and got permission to look around and ask questions," Gordon recalled.

These days, there are a lot of questions laboratory directors can ask regarding more environmentally friendly practices and operations, observers and experts say. Even as the sector moves on toward more high-tech testing that relies on digital imaging and embraces practices such as recycling, there remain many areas where greener practices may be adopted.

For example, many labs still use mercury-based stains and fixatives—although there are many mercury-free alternatives that work just as well. Many labs do not reprocess widely-used solvents such as alcohol and formalin, instead paying outside firms to cart it away and dispose of it. And traditional recycling for paper and plastic often omits huge amounts of material. There are also extensive opportunities for cutting down on ventilation costs, although CLIA regulations contain air flow mandates that do not apply to non-medical research laboratories.

"There is great work being done in hospital laboratories around the country," said Cecilia DeLoach Lynn, director of sector performance with Practice Greenhealth, a Virginia-based trade group that encourages more environmentally- friendly practices among hospitals and other health care providers. And while data is currently lacking in many areas, cost savings appear to be considerable for even small measures.

According to Lynn, a group of as many as 220 hospital laboratories that chose to reprocess their solvents saved more than $639,000 over the course of a year, along with ensuring that 39,000 gallons of hazardous waste did not wind up in a disposal site. Albany Medical Center in upstate New York invested $150,000 in the mid-1990s in a solvent reprocessing system and has saved more than $2 million since.

Recycling—But Not Recycling
One of the things Gordon quickly discovered within the Cleveland Clinic lab system is that while recycling of many paper and plastic items was taking place, literally tons of material was falling through the cracks. Cardboard, paper and hard plastics were being recycled, but materials such as styrofoam and soft plastics were not. That meant plastic wrappers, bubble wrap and paperboard containers for items such as gloves—were being thrown out with conventional garbage.

The Cleveland Clinic's labs gathered up a week of potentially recyclable waste for a greening campaign. The amounts were massive, Gordon said. It contracted with a non-profit firm to sort and recycle those items moving forward.

Another issue was the myriad biohazard safety cabinets within the Cleveland Clinic's labs. Oftentimes, the sashes to the cabinets were being left open on an ongoing basis, meaning their ventilation systems were running non-stop. That practice was modified to keep the ventilation running only when the cabinets were in use.

Ventilation systems are one of the biggest keys to saving energy and cutting costs in a laboratory space. According to Daniel Doyle, Chief Executive Officer of Grumman/Butkus Associates, a Chicago-area design engineer firm that specializes in the health care sector, ventilation can account for as much as 80 percent of all electricity usage.

However, medical laboratories are constrained compared to research laboratories in terms of the changes they can make. "Clinical labs tend to be smaller (than research labs), and more heavily regulated by state codes and (accreditation bodies such as the) Joint Commission. That means there tends to be less opportunity for making big changes," Doyle noted. He added that in Illinois, for example, clinical laboratories are required to have a near constant airflow in work spaces.

Nevertheless, labs can still design HVAC systems that can recover up to 65 percent of the heat being expended, Doyle said. For labs in cold winter climates such as the upper Midwest, that can generate considerable savings on an annual basis.

A study by the organization Laboratories for the 21st Century concluded that such systems can cut space heating and reheating for dehumidification by more than 35 percent, no matter the climate. Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia invested about $300,000 in system modifications and expects to recoup the cost in about four years, according to the study.

Labs also have more options on freezer systems, which have become vastly more efficient in recent years. And newer autoclave systems often also use far less water than their older counterparts. In jurisdictions where such systems are permitted, water running through a continuous loop to cool equipment or for other uses can also be far more efficient and thrifty, according to Doyle.

Cost Savings Not Yet Being Closely Calculated
But how much thriftier a greener laboratory can be is still being quantified, according to Gordon. There are some case studies out there such as the solvent reprocessing data, but it remains patchy. As Practice Greenhealth focuses more on hospital laboratories and other lab operations, the cost savings and return on investments should come into clearer focus.

That will prove crucial for what Gordon believes is one of the most important steps: obtaining buy-in from senior management.

"In a research lab, the buy-in is bottom-up. In a hospital lab, it's top-down," she said, adding that purchasing decisions in that environment are made by senior management. Gordon also acknowledged that the clout of a medical staff member such as herself made it easier to enact changes.

But that's not to say that staff at any level can't successfully promote a green agenda, particularly if the entire system is dedicated to improving the environmental performance of the lab or entire institute. "Anybody can do it," Gordon said.

Takeaway: The laboratory sector is slowly but surely moving toward more environmentally friendly practices that could eventually help their bottom lines.