Transitioning to a sustainable organisation
Sustainability at EMBL reduces our environmental impact, finds solutions to the major global challenges and promotes sustainable science.
Welcome to EMBL sustainability. We have put together information on our sustainability strategy, our green lab initiatives, how EMBL scientists are responding to global challenges, our Sustainability Stories blogs as well as reports and resources to download. Our contact details can also be found here.
“EMBL accepts its responsibility to help address the urgent challenges facing humanity and the planet. Our Sustainability Strategy sets out the ways in which we will respond to achieve our ambition to significantly reduce our environmental impact by 2030.”
– Edith Heard, Director General
Energy saving measures across EMBL sites led to a significant reduction in our total energy usage and carbon footprint in 2023. Our business travel emissions have remained lower than pre-pandemic levels, we have made progress in managing our waste and rolled out new recycling facilities. Finally, all of our applicable groups have signed up to the laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework.
Green EMBL, a staff-led initiative, was established in 2019 in response to our staff’s desire to contribute to environmental improvement. This initiative was preceded by our Staff Association’s own Green Initiatives Working Group. Our staff are extremely passionate about environmental issues and we want to harness this enthusiasm and demonstrate leadership and commitment to a sustainable transition.
We commissioned a Materiality Assessment in 2019 with input from staff, our leadership team, and key external stakeholders. The assessment identified seven material topics to incorporate into our Sustainability Strategy, and these have been grouped in the three pillars of sustainability at EMBL which are detailed on the Sustainability Strategy page,
