Guidelines

• General

• The target of carbon footprint in France is 2.0 tCO2e per person per year (work + private life) by 2050

• Past and current situation - Our World in Data

• CNRS schéma directeur développement durable et responsabilité sociétale (Fr)

• Business trip

• Target a team quota of 0.5 tCO2e per person per year for business travels of lab members as well as invited researchers

• Calculate CO2 emission for each travel by the simulator of Labos 1point5

• Choose trains over airplanes for trajectories less than 1000 km, or whenever the choice of train adds no more than 3 hours to the total travel time

e.g. Round trip Paris - Bordeaux (1 200 km): 0.3 tCO2e by airplane, 0.004 tCO2e by train

e.g. Round trip Paris - New York (11 900 km): 1.8 tCO2e by airplane

• Meals & drinks

• Choose vegetarian option for convivial meals, especially when financed by the laboratory or by the department

• Avoid buying drinks/foods in plastic bottles/containers

• Ask the participants to bring their own cups to share drinks

• Try to reduce the consumption of coffee 

• You want to reduce the carbon footprint of your food? Focus on what you eat, not whether your food is local

• Purchase/donation of lab/office materials

• Consult the sites below before purchasing materials:

Dons des biens mobiliers du Domaine  (Fr)

CNRS Bourse aux matériels (Fr) via Janus

Rewake

• Plastics

• Collection of hard plastics for recycle (Les bouchons de l'espoir)

• Reduce single-use plastics as much as possible

• Heating system/air conditioning

• Keep doors closed when the rooms are air conditionned

• Turn off the heater/cooler during night and weekend (especially offices)

• Set at a reasonable temperature 

• Informatics

• 75% of environmental footprint of informatics is from the fabrication process --> The best is to reduce purchase

• Reuse old computers by running Linux

• Do not send emails with large attachment files, use File Sender

• Turn off camera during video conferences/meetings when possible

• Give a try to the search engine Ecosia

• Unsubscribe from news letters you never read

• Trash old emails

• Turn off devices during night, weekend

• Outil informatique & impact environnemental (INSMI, June 2022) (Fr)

• Deep freezer

• -80 °C freezer consumes electricity more than a house of 4 people

• Set the temperature to -70 °C when possible (30% less energy consumption)

• Tidy and remove old samples

• Best practices included in the Freezer Challenge

• Laboratory practice

• Resources for sustainable laboratory practice – Royal Society of Chemistry 

• Cf. Greenhouse gas balance sheet of PASTEUR lab, 2023 (5.4 tCO2e per capita)

*Activités de recherche = Use of calculation centers

#1 Purchase of lab consumables, equipments (66.2%)

#2 Business trips (11.3%)

#3 Heating system (6.8%)