• Can the objective of a trip be achieved in another way, for example through digital communication, and still accomplish a comparable result regarding knowledge transfer or building networks? Extra considerations here might include the situations of people in early career phases as well as actual networking needs for people in a given field or international environment.
• Can emissions be reduced by adjusting the means of travel or routes? Can air travel be replaced or linked to other stages of the project? Are direct flights available, even if they are more expensive?
• Can a quantitative estimate of the environmental impact (especially CO₂ emissions) caused by the project’s travel be made?
• Organisation of conferences: Could hybrid or digital formats be a alternative?

Example

Acquiring geological samples: Acquiring new samples often requires travel and transport, which gives rise to CO₂ emissions. The latter can be reduced by using existing material as far as possible. When designing the project, consideration is given to whether and where the material required may already be available.

Literature

Journal of Cleaner Production, August 2023, Shifting from academic air travel to sustainable research exchange: Examining networking efficacy during virtual conferences

General

• Which methodological approaches offer the most potential for limiting resources and reducing emissions that are harmful to the climate and the environment?
• Can the design and scaling of the experiment or field trial be better adjusted to the scope required or could a simulation be (partially) used instead?
• Taking into consideration the uniqueness of the planned research, could available existing data be used to conduct the project under more sustainable conditions?
• Could the exhaustive use of data and/or the reuse of available data mean that new measurements and experiments could be more focused or even redundant?

Laboratory equipment and non-renewable materials

• Is it possible to reasonably reduce non-renewables, reuse items or use items made of recycled material?
• Can providers be found that sell more energy-efficient products?
• Could purchasing smaller quantities reduce the effort and cost required for storage? Emissions and resource consumption caused by transport must also be taken into account.

Example

The research proposal refers to existing sustainability certificates or the relevant specifications in the laboratory in question, where applicable.

Samples

• Is it possible to draw on existing samples?
• Is it possible within reason to reduce the amount of material, reuse material or make it available to others?
• Is it possible to store objects in a more climate-friendly and energy-efficient way? For example, can samples be stored at a lower or higher temperature?

Examples

• Shared use of existing equipment or materials and testing of the reusability of laboratory equipment or sample containers.
• Replace environmentally harmful and climate-damaging substances used in laboratory and field research with more climate-friendly and ecofriendly compounds such as krypton/helium mixtures instead of SF6 tracers. 
• Check whether smaller quantities of the sample can be used if environmentally harmful chemicals are involved (e.g. smaller soil samples); establish measures/protocols to reduce contaminated water in laboratory research, e.g. water when washing roots.

Literature

The responsible use of natural resources in field research: American Journal of Primatology, October 2012, Reducing the Ecological Impact of Field Research

• Can energy consumption be reduced by a more hypothesis-driven and more efficient approach to the planned simulations?
• Can the computing power for modelling, simulation, evaluation and visualisation be reduced? Would cloud-based solutions be a resource-saving option? Is it possible to use suppliers who provide green electricity?
• When selecting the parameters for a simulation, can you use less energy while maintaining a comparable quality of results?
• Could existing simulation data from other sources be used to reduce resource consumption and emissions?
• Is there potential for a reduction of resources based on the exhaustive utilisation and/or provision and/or reuse of the simulation data collected?
• Can specific statements be made on the environmental impact (specifically with regard to CO₂ emission levels) caused by time-intensive computing simulations?

Examples

• Define benchmarks to determine the most efficient programme in cases where several software packages are available that offer the functionalities required for your project.
• In the case of decentralised or non-shared computer resources, take care to ensure that resource capacities are sufficiently exploited / efficiently utilised.
• Raise awareness of resource consumption, for example by issuing lists of monthly CPU/GPU hours or else providing a conversion into electricity costs or an estimate of the amount of CO₂.
• Draw on measures and support services for the efficient use of computer resources or obtain them from appropriate service providers (keywords: training programmes on HPC use, green IT strategies at the university, performance engineering for research software).

• Is it necessary to purchase new instrumentation? Or is there instrumentation that is already available or that can be repaired – also in neighbouring work groups or core facilities, for example? Would the new instrumentation be more energy-efficient than any existing instrumentation?
• Before purchasing new instrumentation, what information is available on its environmental impact and its capacity to reduce the use of resources and emissions during its production and operation?
• Are there ways of achieving an even more efficient use of resources and lower emissions in terms of service life and reparability when purchasing new instrumentation and with a view to usage requirements?
• Has the decommissioning of instrumentation, for example with regard to recycling, been considered?

Examples

• “Freezer Challenge”: The challenge is an international competition organised by “My Green Lab” and “I2SL” (International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories). The aim is to promote and disseminate best-practice measures for the effective storage of samples and the energy-saving management of freezers and refrigerators.
• Shared use of instrumentation or development of a utilisation concept: shared use of instrumentation – based on centralised and coordinated allocation of usage time, for example – promotes efficient and resource-saving use.
• Instrumentation repair: Scientific instrumentation and information technology are two of the areas in which the DFG is committed to anchoring the concept of sustainability in its funding activities. For this reason, there are now expanded options for having DFG-funded instrumentation repaired.