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:
Open Lab, Hillman Library Room 132, 3960 Forbes Avenue
Pitt Green Office Leads: Aaron Graham, V. Z. White (pictured)
Pitt Green Office since June 2020
V. with an autoclavable tube rack made in The Open Lab.
Open Lab is a partnership between the Center for Teaching and Learning and the University Library System, is a campus makerspace inside Hillman Library, where members of the Pitt Community can create with new technologies including virtual reality, 3D printing, vinyl cutting, laser cutting/engraving, and more. Visitors to the Open Lab have, for example, 3D printed a human brain for neuroanatomy classes, the heads of two of their student staff as stands for Virtual Reality headsets, and most recently, an autoclavable tube rack made from polycarbonate. Open Lab’s resources are free to use, and staff is always on hand to help members with their projects.
In the makerspace, members are encouraged to test out new ideas, try, make mistakes, and learn from those experiences with new technologies. For Open Lab manager Aaron Graham, there is tension with this ethos when it comes to waste – wood, PLA filament, vinyl scraps, and more— that accompanies such a creative process. It’s this tension that led Graham to pursue sustainable alternatives to reduce and offset this waste, and to the Pitt Green programs.
Open Lab is run by many student staff, and Graham encourages them to bring their passions and interests to the lab. For staff member V. Z. White, that led to researching, pursuing, and implementing sustainable operations and a culture of sustainability at Open Lab.
With V.’s leadership, Open Lab encourages creative, artistic use of scrap materials, which visitors to the lab are reminded of with eye-catching signage. Energy-wise, the lab uses rechargeable batteries for its VR headsets, and unplugs equipment when it is not in use. The lab collects filament scraps for a mail-back recycling program and donates usable art materials to nearby nonprofit Pittsburgh Center for Creative Reuse. So far, the lab has recycled 142 lbs of polylactic acid filament. They have also recently started using biodegradable gloves designed to break down quickly in a landfill, as opposed to typical nitrile gloves.
What’s next for Open Lab? On-site filament recycling has been explored, but the lack of a reliable, affordable option and limited space have thus far made that investment out of reach. With many medical 3D printers on campus and additional makerspaces, Open Lab hopes that Pitt might explore a campus-wide filament recycling program. Shipment packaging like EPS and plastic air pockets continue to pose a challenge for sustainability when ordering from smaller vendors, and Open Lab would love for Pitt to engage with these vendors in alternative or durable packaging materials (such as those used in ODP/Supra’s Green Tote Program). Finally, they would love to see more swap events for the Pitt community to encourage reuse, repair, and sharing of existing items and materials rather than ordering new.
Graham and White encourage Pitt community members to make use of the resources and technologies in Open Lab for their own sustainability projects, such as using Virtual Reality painting with OpenBrush help to minimize material use in drafting, or opting to 3D print or vinyl cut smaller runs of an item needed in your lab, office, or for an event, rather than paying to print and ship one-off items. Head on over to Open Lab to see their sustainable practices in person, and check out these and more resources available to you!
Thanks to V., Aaron, and Open Lab for sharing their sustainability story, and for all their efforts!