Harvard Medical School

When you’re working away in your dorm or office trying to implement sustainability initiatives, it can often feel overwhelming.  It shouldn’t be that way, especially when there are so many impassioned students, staff and faculty throughout Harvard dedicated to making Green the new Crimson!

DePace Lab is located on the 4th floor of the Harvard Medical School’s Warren Alpert Building at 200 Longwood Avenue in Boston, MA. The renovation project achieved LEED-CI certification at the Gold level in July 2009. This was the first renovation of a wet lab at Harvard University to achieve a LEED certification, and shows the Medical School's strong committment to sustainability.

Under the leadership of Heather Foley, Staff Assistant, the Center for Health & the Global Environment (CHGE) was the first office to achieve Leaf 4 Green Office Certification at Harvard Medical School.

Harvard University honored and recognized Harvard faculty, students, and staff who have made significant contributions to green house gas reduction and sustainability efforts at Harvard at the first annual Green Carpet Awards on Friday, April 23rd, a day after the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day.

Harvard Medical School received an Award of Environmental Excellence from Stericycle® for its use of reusable sharps containers in the HIM & NRB buildings. Since HMS began using the reusable sharps containers in May 2009, 6,774 lbs of plastic have been diverted landfills as a result of this initiative.

Mac-Gray, the laundry company that services Vanderbilt Hall, replaced all ten of the old washing machines in Vanderbilt with new, energy efficient front-loaders.

If you're a researcher visiting this site, you probably already know that fume hoods are voracious consumers of energy, so we have put together some resources for you to help you reduce fume hood energy use.

1) Proper hood usage

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. We hear this mantra time and again. When it comes to carbon—the “most wanted” element in terms of climate change—nature has got reuse and recycle covered. But it’s up to us to reduce.

There are some key opportunities for lab occupants (including PIs, lab managers, post-docs, and student researchers) to become engaged in lab sustainability efforts. Harvard’s Office for Sustainability recommends the following...

Ensuring adequate space for waste disposal facilities and signage is incredibly important both for new lab move-ins and during the ongoing operation of the lab. Ideally, labs will have one or more ‘waste stations’ that include the following: