Laboratory sustainability is often measured in kilowatt-hours saved or plastics diverted. But metrics alone do not determine whether green practices take root. Culture—whether people feel included, respected, and motivated—shapes how technical solutions succeed or stall.
At the My Green Lab Summit 2025, panelists in the session Beyond Compliance: Scaling Lab Sustainability with Trust and Inclusion argued that progress depends as much on relationships as on resource management. Moderator Stephanie Millar, vice president of strategic growth at Impact Laboratories, guided a conversation that brought together perspectives from academia, industry, and global healthcare. Speakers included Marissa Clapson, assistant professor at the University of Prince Edward Island and chair of the Green Division of the Chemical Institute of Canada; Kristen Richards, global sustainability manager at Beckman Coulter Life Sciences; and Rolf Slaats, global coordinator for lab workspace and sustainability at Roche.
Inclusion as a foundation for sustainable science
Clapson emphasized that creating a welcoming and confident environment is essential to embedding sustainable practices in education and research. “Making sure that people feel welcome in the lab space and capable in the lab space is a huge part of just buying into sustainability in the first place,” she said.
When teaching green chemistry, Clapson explained, her focus is on both technical skills and community-building. “We not only want to provide them with the methods that are used in green chemistry … but we want them to have the confidence to be able to talk about their ideas of what to change based on the data they’re actually getting out of there.”
Creating “initiative points” for dialogue, she added, helps ensure that opinions are respected rather than dismissed.
Balancing sustainability with business demands
Richards framed Beckman Coulter’s approach as one of integration across functions. “The main message I want to get across … is the importance of breaking down silos and looking for opportunities for cross-functional collaboration.”
She described how green lab certification, design-for-sustainability programs, and ACT eco-labeling efforts work together, involving R&D, facilities, quality, and manufacturing teams. The goal, she said, is to generate “ideas across a wide array of functions” that improve both operations and products.
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Richards also pointed to the pressures of working in a resource-constrained environment: “We always look for ways to not put them in conflict with one another … we put a lot of time into analyzing the highest impact opportunities for sustainability improvements.” Listening to customers and embedding sustainability early in product development have been central strategies, she added.
Bridging global goals and local realities
Slaats described Roche’s dual approach to sustainability, where corporate targets set direction, but individual labs also volunteer to pursue certification. “Three-quarters of these labs are certified because of top-down target setting … [while] the other quarter of the labs came to us by themselves,” he noted. This combination, he argued, motivates teams while maintaining organizational momentum.
He emphasized that credibility hinges on transparency, not optics. Roche’s net zero plan, he explained, demands absolute reductions rather than accounting shortcuts: “There’s no planting trees, no offsetting involved.” Publishing data, validating targets externally, and acknowledging both the benefits and trade-offs of interventions are essential for avoiding greenwashing and building trust.
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Overcoming resistance and building champions
Several panelists addressed the challenge of engaging scientists whose workloads leave little time for sustainability initiatives. Slaats noted that “scientists are … creative, innovative, but in their ways, they’re actually very conservative,” often sticking with familiar vendors or methods. He described using peer examples—such as solvent swaps that cut emissions by 90 percent—as a way to lower barriers to change.
Clapson observed similar dynamics in academia, where “the old prof syndrome” can create resistance. She encouraged positioning sustainability as a pathway to grant success: “Sustainability does lead to grant funding … our Canadian national funding, for example, straight up asks you, what are the impacts to Canada, including sustainability?”
Richards emphasized the importance of grassroots champions, saying Beckman’s programs help create “sustainability experts throughout our business, and not to mention it’s a great professional development opportunity.”
Culture as the multiplier
Across academia, diagnostics, and global pharma, the panel returned to the same theme: sustainability sticks when it becomes cultural. Metrics and compliance are necessary, but insufficient. Respect, dialogue, and transparency foster the trust that enables teams to explore new approaches—and continually refine them.
As Millar concluded, “Sustainability is no longer about meeting the minimum standard. It’s about moving beyond compliance, embedding trust, integrity, and accountability into the very DNA of all of your organizations.”
In short, culture is not separate from sustainability—it is the driver that makes lasting change possible.
