Boston-Area Firms Share Strategies for Customer Collaboration on Sustainability

When the I2SL Annual Conference kicked off in Boston last month, a panel of plenary speakers representing the pharmaceutical, design, and lab supply industry shared some of the drivers that are making them strive to be leaders in sustainable lab design. Like many of the sessions throughout the conference, plenary panelists described why they have chosen to work on improving energy performance, reducing emissions, and minimizing waste in lab buildings, products, and supplies, including customer preference.

Led by moderator Chris Incarvito, Associate Provost for Science Initiatives at Yale University’s West Campus, the plenary panel included; Johanna Jobin, Global Head of Environmental Sustainability and Compliance, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company; Craig Thompson, Chief Operating Officer, Cell Signaling Technology (CST); and Jacob Werner, senior architect and laboratory planner at Ellenzweig and I2SL’s New England Chapter President. While the panelists represented organizations that have demonstrated sustainability leadership in their respective fields, they acknowledged that their customers are also demanding that products create less waste, supplies have less packaging, and buildings use less energy and are resilient to the future effects of climate change.

According to Johanna, 30 percent of Takeda’s customers have indicated that they care about sustainability when they purchase pharmaceuticals, and this number is growing. Takeda isn’t waiting for regulatory frameworks to be imposed; they are taking the initiative to incorporate a variety of sustainable design features in the new building they are leasing from BioMed Realty in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and working with Boston Medical Center to reduce pharmaceutical packaging waste. Takeda also prepared a guide to conducting waste audits at  healthcare pharmaceutical facilities and created sustainability guidelines for their suppliers. “More often than not,” Johanna said, “our suppliers are coming to the table with ideas of their own to meet these guidelines.”

CST’s sustainability journey was initially internally focused on initiatives such as recycling, Craig said, but then they discovered that both researchers and larger customers such as Takeda wanted them to do much more as a supplier. Cell Signaling Technology works with their customers of all sizes on initiatives such as reducing plastics in the packaging used for the antibodies they provide to laboratories, including creating alternatives to expanded polystyrene foam. CST’s new facility in Danvers, Massachusetts, will incorporate energy-efficient design and operation. Craig also noted that climate resilience is a growing concern, as 100-year storms become much more frequent due to climate change.

Jacob said that clients are looking to enhance occupant experience in lab buildings, as well as design for decarbonization. Electrification is becoming more important to lab owners, as is reducing the embodied carbon in their lab buildings. One way to do that is to renovate existing lab buildings before building new ones; another is using products such as mass timber with a lower embodied carbon footprint. Jacob and other volunteers are working on an I2SL embodied carbon best practices guide; stay tuned for more information!