As any year, the Green Vivarium Foundation presented its Foundation Awards to recognize efforts by people, ideas, designs and systems that promote energy savings, and emissions and waste reduction. Prof Jorg Schmidt was awarded for the BEST INDIVIDUAL INITIATIVE CRITERIA for 2009. Prof Schmidt is the Director of the Department of Comparative Medicine at the Helmholtz Centre Munich, the German Research Centre for Environmental Health.

Professor Schmidt’s objective was to reduce plastic waste and C0₂ emissions by recycling redundant polycarbonate (PC) cage components and water bottles into material for new products. The PC recycling programme started in 2008 in partnership with Tecniplast, a European plastic cage manufacturing company, certified by the Italian IPPR (Institute for the Promotion of Recycled Plastics) consortium to collect, store and recycle certified waste plastic materials.

Prof. Schmidt was the first person to take advantage of Tecniplast’s revolutionary program of recycling old plastic cages, and his Centre was the first to start a recycling program of old plastic cages.

“Instead of dumping used polycarbonate (PC) mouse cages into landfill or for incineration, a recycling program was initiated in 2008 with the aim of recycling some 3,000 – 5,000 discarded PC cages and PC water bottles per year. To this end I started a new waste separation initiative at the Centre’s  Animal Facility. A first batch of 3,715 used cages and 240 water bottles with a total weight of 2,014.2 kg was collected in our wash rooms between July 2008 and April 2009, transported to a recycling company, ground down, and used for the production of new industrial equipment and appliances. With this first batch we avoided 37,967.6 kg net of CO₂ production. Transport of the materials to the recycling centre and the energy for grinding were subtracted. From May 2009 to Sept. 2009, the Helmholtz Centre’s Animal Facility collected  a second batch of 2,978 used cages and 540 bottles with a total weight of 1,641 kg. This second batch will be recycled before the end of  2009 and will  avoid the production of 30,932 kg of CO₂. In continuation of this initiative we intend to reduce CO₂  production in the range of 45,000 to 74,000 kg per year.”

An Article on The Margaret M. Alkek Building, the 2009 Turnkey Facility of the year,  was published in Animal Lab News in May. The article pointed out how the Department of Comparative Medicine (CCM) at the Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) has been a leader in exploring new systems and technologies to improve and enhance the operations of their vivarium facilities. The article explores in detail each of the innovations chosen by the Center, why they were incorporated into the plans, the design and operational challenges of each solution and their expected outcomes. The analysis demonstrates Baylor’s ongoing commitment to innovation and to the betterment of animal research,  and the courage of the management in accepting to BETA test newly applied technologies and operational protocols, engaging new technologies and procedures in the ongoing quest to maintain and improve animal health, the health and safety of their animal care staff and technicians and to provide quality work environments for the researchers.
This article presents and discusses the new technologies, designs and protocols that have been implemented in this world-class facility. They include:
-    A fifth generation automated cage processing system with a clean and dirty robotics driven tunnel washer
-    A Fully automated bottle processing system, one of the first in the United States, capable of processing nearly 1,200 bottles per hour with minimal human intervention
-    Large animal holding rooms supporting up to 1,680 cages per room in high density, library style caging systems
An interesting part of the article is the description of the reasons that have driven Baylor college toward this first experience with robotic driven cage processing. These include:
-    maintaining the lowest per diem rates possible
-    allowing animal care staff to focus on value added tasks
-    minimizing ergonomic health related problems associated with cages processing
-    minimizing exposure to dander and dust generated by cage processing.
The article gives a clear description of how researchers find their facility a delight to work in and how BCM finds that the new building is a major asset in the recruitment of new investigators and justifies the award they received as The Turn Key facility of the year, and how the right decisions of the management in terms of technology selections have created a high performance, efficient and healthy environment for the investigative staff and the animal care staff.

An interview with Dr Gregory Norris, visiting scientist at Harvard University and Adjunct Research Professor at the University of New Hampshire, was published on Animal Lab News Europe in March. The title of the interview is: “Climate for Change?”.

Dr Gregory Norris describes how laboratory animal facilities utilise considerable amounts of both natural and manufactured resources and generate significant amounts of waste. He underlines how this is becoming regarded as unsustainable. Moreover, Dr Norris points out how sustainable development and product life cycle analysis (LCA) are becoming part of instituted policies and mainstream management operations for some of the most advanced facilities and how “green issues” are becoming a reality, in particularly in some countries in Europe, for example.
An important remark concerns LCA.  LCA seeks to answer the question: “what are all the environmental, health and resource impacts of a product over its entire life cycle, including the full supply chain of the product, the whole chain of processes used to produce it, plus the use of the product and its end of life fates?”
The identification of the environmental impact of laboratory animal facility operations is also covered. In addition to saving energy and resources used to provide support and a suitable environment for the animals, Dr Norris underlines that in the case of ventilated durable cages, the energy used for ventilation and sterilization of the cages is as important as the energy used to make and transport the cages in the first place. By comparison he has found that the energy required to make disposable ventilated cages,  plus the fossil fuels embodied in the plastic itself, add up over the course of a year and can exceed the energy required to wash and sterilize a durable cage over the same year.
Dr Norris concludes by stating how LCA often surprises us. It often shows that major impacts come  from some part of product life cycle that we were ignoring.

An interview with Porf. Jorg Schmidt, of the Helmholtz Center Munich, the German Research Center for Environmental Health, based in Neuherberg, near Munich, was published in Animal Lab News Europe in March. The title of the interview is: “New lamps for Old Mouse Cages!”.

Prof. Jorg Schmidt was the first Customer to exploit the TP Plastic Mouse Cage Recycling Initiative.
Plastic recycling is the process of recovering scrap or waste plastics and reprocessing the material into useful products, sometimes completely different in form from their original state. For instance, this could mean melting down Plastic Mouse Cages then moulding them into plastic chairs and tables. All plastics can be recycled. However, the extent to which they are recycled depends upon both economic and logistical factors. As a valuable and finite resource, the optimum use for most plastic after its first use is to be recycled, preferably into a product that can be recycled again. Manufacturing a new building product from recycled uPVC saves 94% of carbon dioxide emissions compared to production using virgin PVC polymer (Source: Axion Recycling)
It is clear that all plastic products, even a high quality durable plastic Mouse cage,  have a finite life and at the end that would usually mean consignment to a landfill or incineration. However there is now a new European Initiative to recycle both plastic and steel components of mouse cages and water bottles, considering that even a durable plastic mouse cage has characteristics that can raise problems with disposal. The impact on the environment from non bio-degradable plastic products deposited in landfills or incinerated is of growing concern. Recycling the components of plastic cages not only reduces the amount of solid waste and pollution but, by recycling the plastic into new products, reduces the use of new resources, reduces energy consumption and emission of greenhouse gases. Re-cycled plastic will be turned into automotive parts, furniture, appliances, office and urban equipment..
Prof. Schmidt describes how he welcomes and supports this European initiative as it concurs with his facility’s continuous efforts to reduce plastic and metal waste wherever possible and recycle or revive it, not only in the laboratory animal science field but also in all other areas of public life. He is well aware that laboratory animal facilities utilise considerable amounts of both natural and manufactured resources and generate significant amounts of waste.
This project is driven solely by concerns for the environment and sustainable development as  customers trading in old cages will receive credits that can be traded in against the cost of new products.

An interview with Patricia Hunt at Washington University in Pullman was published on Nature in June (Vol 453/19 June 2008).

The title of the interview is: Lab disinfectants harms mouse facility. Patricia describes her findings in terms of birth defects and fertility problems in mice housed in cages washed with some quaternary ammonium compounds present in the famous commercial disinfectant Virex (Johnson Diversey).

It was unavoidable to check first all detergents in use at IWT and suggested by IWT to customers for presence of the two incriminated molecules of quaternary ammonium compounds.

None of them are in the past and actual detergents in use.

An important insight comes from the experience of Patricia Hunt: importance of rinsing phase after washing. IWT has developed over the years washing equipments characterized by a high pressure rinsing process to guarantee the complete removal of residuals from the cage surfaces.

Furthermore, the very high pressure water system common to all cycle phase in IWT equipment allows the use of very low detergents concentrations and today, the possibility to use acid detergents only with comparable results to those with alkaline detergents.