Conscious spending can unlock greener science

The best time to buy an item is when it’s on sale. But I have often purchased, for a good deal, things I don’t need. Finding a buy-one, get-one sale on my favorite bottled water or coffee creamer can be enticing. I’ll always be able to drink that water, but I may not finish the coffee creamer because my caffeine consumption is erratic. So that second bottle of creamer doesn’t always get finished before it goes bad and needs to be tossed out. When I use these same buying tactics for my lab, making purchases based on an apparent value now can cost me later. That’s why researchers need to be thoughtful when it comes to keeping the lab stocked.

For some items, having a stockpile is useful. It’s not a problem to have extra weighing dishes or pipette tips; those items will always find utility in the lab. On the other hand, reagents have a shelf life. Compounds may either decompose or react when left untouched for too long. This change can lead to the need to purify or dispose of those reagents, and they become more of a hassle to handle. When thinking of purchasing, calculating price per gram is often the strategy, especially for newer principal investigators who are trying to get the most bang for their lab’s start-up funding. This strategy can lead to buying large quantities of compounds because the cost makes sense in the moment. But when not properly managed, this purchasing can lead to a buildup of chemicals that contribute to the “chemical graveyard” that we should be actively avoiding.

By developing smarter purchasing habits, we can help limit the pressure on labs from both the perspective of storage and the perspective of waste. The best way to limit risks from storage and waste-stream generation is to shorten the chemical shopping list or buy smaller quantities when possible. This smart shopping also reduces the need to regularly repurify compounds before using them, as they sit and age or decompose. While being more conscious about spending can help limit hazards in the lab, it can also help improve financial sustainability in the research enterprise.

An additional way to help relieve some of these financial and chemical pressures is to consider recycling high-use chemicals, most notably solvents. After running a column, the majority of the solvent is typically disposed of. When possible, we should recycle or repurpose those solvents. A quick test by gas chromatography to know what percentage the mixture is after running the column could lead to using the solvent mixture for another purification later. Solvent recyclers, which take the solvents collected after their use in the lab and separate them through large-scale distillation, could be another method for lowering the cost of solvent use in departments or groups. This equipment is an investment on the front end but can help save the money allocated to constantly purchasing these solvents in bulk, storing them, and disposing of them. Recycling solvents isn’t always the top priority of researchers since it takes time that could be used to set up another experiment or analyze data. The perception is that the cost of the solvent compared with the cost of the time doesn’t favor recycling, but the overall impacts should be considered in this evaluation as well.

As researchers are all too well aware, the status of funding in the scientific research enterprise is changing rapidly. As we adapt, we will have to change how we seek and spend funds. Our dollar needs to go further.

Finding greener ways to perform chemistry is one of the most promising ways to add financial flexibility while also maximizing performance and environmental consciousness. If researchers focus on invoking principles such as catalysis, waste prevention, and using new data technologies, they’ll be able to make more targeted decisions about experimental design. That work will help reduce pressures on the research wallet. Catalysis helps reduce reagent quantities and lower operational costs, as well as potentially shortening reaction times. The implementation of technologies such as mechanochemistry, biocatalysis, photochemistry, and flow chemistry can help reduce costs by removing the need for solvents, additional molecular additives, or the need to perform multiple batch experiments. These efforts help limit waste streams. Through these kinds of improvements in the research and development effort, we can make chemistry more accessible in cost.

Recycling and repurposing old laboratory equipment and salvaging parts can also help reduce spending. Your rotary evaporator may not work for its initial function, but maybe the hot bath still powers on and can be used for other purposes? Could that old overhead stirrer be brought back to life for a new purpose using 3D printing?

We can make financially conscious decisions by working in a greener mindset. Consideration of chemical sustainability often begins and ends with thinking about reactions and reagents. But what if we thought of the full enterprise in a “farm to table” manner—from purchasing to publishing for academic endeavors, or from problem to patient in pharmaceutical development?

By working to reduce the costs of chemistry, we can also make the research and development space more inviting to smaller teams, start-up companies, or labs who may have a gap in funding. Really, this effort is bigger than green chemistry. It’s green economics. Each lab’s savings can have impacts on the broader research and economics community. So in the same way that on my next trip to the grocery store, I’ll probably just grab one bottle of coffee creamer, I’ll be more thoughtful with the next order for my lab. It’s a small change that has a lasting impact, both on my wallet and in my approach to my research enterprise.

Isaiah Speight is an assistant professor at William and Mary and a principal investigator at the National Science Foundation’s Center for the Mechanical Control of Chemistry.

Views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of C&EN or the American Chemical Society.