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International Laboratory Freezer Challenge
The International Freezer Challenge is a friendly competition co-sponsored by I2SL and My Green Lab designed to promote best practices for energy efficiency in cold storage management. Challenge winners are determined based on the amount of energy they save and can also earn points for sharing tips about their own cold storage best practices.
- Take the 2023 Freezer Challenge and start saving in your lab! Register online to receive your scoresheet and begin earning points for your cold storage energy savings. All scoresheets are due by July 1, 2023.
- Participants can earn points through various efficiency actions, such as temperature tuning, retiring or upgrading old freezers, cleaning out unneeded samples, implementing cutting-edge practices, and more. You can also earn points by sharing your own best practices with others.
- Winners will be featured in Lab Manager magazine and will be recognized at the I2SL 2023 Annual Conference.
Congratulations to the 2022 Freezer Challenge winners! Over 1,200 labs from 27 countries and over 12,000 cold storage units participated in this year's challenge. Participants saved saved a total of 9.5 million kilowatt hours of energy—equivalent to the energy consumption of over 1,300 homes for one year! These savings also helped prevent 6,732 metric tons of carbon dioxide from being released. Since its inception in 2017, the International Freezer Challenge has saved 24 million kWh of energy.
- 2022 Biotech/Pharmaceutical Sector Winners
- Top Organization Award: Amgen
- Large Size Lab Award: Amgen Massachusetts Pivotal Biologics Lab
- Medium Size Lab Award: Raw Materials Lab, Bio-Rad (Kidlington Branch), Oxfordshire, UK
- Small Size Lab Award: Process Biochemistry Lab in Biogen at Cambridge
- Biorepository/Core Services/Shared Cold Storage Facility Award: South San Francisco Biobank, Astrazeneca
- 2022 Academic Sector Winners
- Top Organization Award: University of Virginia
- Large Size Lab Award: Traidl-Hoffmann Lab, Institute of Environmental Medicine, University of Augsburg, Germany
- Medium Size Lab Award: Bristol Bioresource Laboratories, University of Bristol, UK
- Small Size Lab Award: Manne Lab, University of Alabama at Birmingham
- Biorepository/Core Services/Shared Cold Storage Facility Award: The Indiana CTSI Specimen Storage Facility, the Indiana University School of Medicine
- 2022 Government Sector Winners
- Top Government Organization Award: Central Veterinary Laboratory in Harare, Zimbabwe
- Medium Size Lab Award: The Ostrander Laboratory of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health
- 2022 Hospital/Clinical/Other Winners
- Top Organization Award: Boston Children’s Hospital
- Large Size Lab Award: Microbiology Lab, St. Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin, Ireland
- Medium Size Lab Award: NSW Biochemical Genetics Service, Sydney Children’s Hospital Network, Australia
- Small Size Lab Award: Richard Wood Lab, MD Anderson Cancer Center
- Biorepository/Core Services/Shared Cold Storage Facility Award: Nationwide Children’s Abigail Wexner Research Institute Biopathology Center
- 2022 Winning Streak Awards (given to previous year's winners that exceeded their energy savings from last year)
- Organizations:
- AstraZeneca
- University of Alabama at Birmingham
- Labs
- Lab+, Coventry University, UK
- Van Der Pol Lab, University of Alabama at Birmingham
- The Microbial Self-Healing Research Group at the National Research and Innovation Agency, Indonesia
- 2022 Honorable Mentions
- Organizations
- MD Anderson Cancer Center
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA
- The Institute of Cancer Research, UK
- National Institutes of Health
- Labs
- Sample Technologies Lab, QIAGEN, Germany
Participants earned points through various efficiency actions, such as temperature tuning, retiring or upgrading old freezers, cleaning out unneeded samples, implementing cutting-edge practices, and more.
Read more about the 2022 winners and their cold storage energy savings in this article featured in Lab Manager magazine. Winners were also recognized at the I2SL Annual Conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
- Wondering how your fellow scientists implement cold storage best practices in a variety of lab environments? Hear from four panelists who have participated in My Green Lab and I2SL's Freezer Challenge. If interested in viewing the panel discussion, you can download the free recording here.
- Learn more about the 2022 Freezer Challenge through the video below and check out this article by Eppendorf in Lab Worldwide.
- Read about the 2021 winners in Nature and My Green Lab's blog and get inspired for the next Freezer Challenger! The winners were recognized during the 2021 I2SL Annual Conference in Atlanta.
- View the recording for My Green Lab's virtual event, Let's Talk Freezers. During the conversation, the 2021 Freezer Challenge sponsor organizations discussed their work and answered attendee questions about lab cold storage.
- Visit the Freezer Challenge Resources page to view the webinars "Decrease Energy Usage in the Laboratory With the Next Generation of Sustainable Ultra-Low Freezers" and "Beyond Power Consumption: Storing Efficiently at -80C."
I2SL and My Green Lab would like to thank the 2022 Freezer Challenge sponsors:
