The Pitt Green Spotlight is a monthly series highlighting Pitt’s Green Offices & Labs! Each post highlights Pitt Green Offices and/or Labs, sharing their experiences implementing sustainable practices, tips and tricks, lessons learned, and opportunities for more sustainable work at Pitt.
We hope these Pitt Green Offices & Labs will inspire you to try out new sustainable practices in your own workspace! Want to be included in our next highlight? Contact us.
Pitt Green Office Spotlight: Office of the Provost, 801 Cathedral of Learning
Green Office since July 2020
Olivia Albert, Riley Ginerva Bender, Jordan Bowser, Meghan Culpepper, Amanda Jones, Erin Maloney, Ian Whetstone
What sparked you to start looking for ways to make your office operate more sustainably?
The Office of the Provost’s sustainability committee formed in 2020 with the primary intention of becoming a Pitt Green Office, but there was great interest among members of our office, especially Provost Cudd, to make continued sustainability improvements.
What sustainable practices have made the most noticeable difference in your office?
Two of the office sustainable practices we implemented are composting and specialty recycling (batteries, electronics, etc.). Although we initially had to remind the office that it was there, now it has become routine to compost. For example, our monthly office birthday celebrations are now 100% green.
What practice would you recommend other offices try?
As mentioned earlier, composting is a great way to start out because it is simple to implement. You just need to make it clear to your office what items can and cannot be composted. We do so with signage posted above the bins. We would also recommend offices evaluate their purchasing and investigate more sustainable options where possible.
What opportunities or challenges would you like to see addressed for a more sustainable office?
We would love to see more composting drop-off locations, specifically in the Cathedral, since our composting has greatly increased!
Pitt Green Lab Spotlight: Microbiology Teaching Labs, Biological Sciences, Clapp Hall
Green Lab since February 2020
Dr. Kim Payne, Wendi Li
What sparked you to start looking for ways to make your lab(s) operate more sustainably?
I was frustrated with the amount of material waste that we generated between tips, tubes, and plates.
What sustainable practices have made the most noticeable difference in your lab?
We saw the most materials and cost savings by switching to reusable containers for as much as possible, like glass test tubes and dilution bottles for aliquots of reagents.
We also use loose tips instead of new tip boxes or refill racks — and hire an undergraduate worker to help refill tip boxes. We don’t stress about the boxes being completely full as long as they are autoclaved.
What practice would you recommend other labs try?
Recycling our lab plastics with Polycarbin has worked great. We have plastic beakers as collection points at all benches for tips and empty tubes, dump them in a bin to autoclave, and then just fill the Polycarbin box and leave it to be picked up and shipped back.
What opportunities or challenges would you like to see addressed for a more sustainable lab?
I would like to find ways to divert even more waste from biohazard (which ultimately goes to landfills), along with University collections for recycling sytrofoam and plastic film — or even better the reduction of those materials with our supplies vendors.