William Smith, a graduate student at University of St. Andrews, normally studies how Drosophila controls their movements in Stefan Pulver’s lab. But in the midst of calcium imaging and electrophysiology experiments, he wondered how much his work was impacting the environment. Together with fellow PhD students Aimee Bebbington and Ranjini Sircar, and Professor Malte Gather at the University of Cologne, Smith systematically documented carbon utilization over the course of a year and recently published the group’s findings in the journal GENETICS. This case study can help researchers know what aspects of their work have the largest impact on carbon emissions and identify where they can focus their efforts to reduce them.

All in all, his research, based on conservative estimates, released 542 kg of CO2 emissions, about 3% of the median UK household’s yearly emissions according to researchers.

The authors arrived at this number by considering all stages of research from procurement of reagents and equipment, experimentation, analysis, data storage, and material disposal, to travel associated with the work. 

Direct use of CO2 to anesthetize the insects for sorting accounted for 3.62 kg of CO2 emissions for the year.

Other forms of carbon emissions were found to be indirect emissions generated by electricity use: preparing food for the flies, equipment to run experiments, energy associated with data analysis, storage, and presentation, waste disposal by autoclaving, building maintenance, and climate control for incubators. To assess the carbon emissions associated with these activities, the scientists had to convert kWh of electricity used into CO2 emissions. The researchers noted that the carbon usage depended on how energy is generated in a specific region and its energy demands. Smith’s research produced 12.6 kg CO2 emissions from electricity in South Scotland, but had he done this work in South Wales, it would have released over 12 times more CO2.

Carbon emissions associated with procurement were more difficult to calculate because it involved understanding how the reagents arrived from suppliers to their lab and information requests to the suppliers sometimes went unanswered.

The researchers also looked at carbon emissions associated with travel. Not surprisingly, air travel accounted for a larger proportion of emissions compared to travel by rail and Smith’s total of nine travel instances accounted for over 442 kg of carbon emissions, equivalent to that from 32 electrophysiology experiments, 124 dual color calcium imaging experiments, 334 calcium imaging, or 618 behavior optogenetics experiments.

The researchers proposed several options that could help the field improve sustainability. As of 2024, there are an estimated 2,074 active Drosophila labs; therefore, changes to anesthetizing practices such as swapping CO2 use for cold anesthetization could have bigger impacts if adopted by the entire Drosophila community. Prioritizing air travel for early career scientists that most benefit from these engagements over senior researchers could reduce the emissions related to travel. Lastly, replacing old, energy-inefficient equipment with more energy-efficient ones could reduce electricity use.

With over 250,000 doctoral students graduating each year, widespread adoption of sustainability lab practices could have an even greater impact. If more graduate students documented their carbon usage in what the researchers called “carbon appendices” added to PhD theses, we could record a wealth of data to empower researchers to implement green initiatives in the future.

References

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