Share this
Environmental procurement can reduce operating costs, reduce the impact vivarium facilities can have on the environment, and promote sustainability and waste reduction.
Laboratory sciences are in a transition phase towards more sustainable operations. The justification for sustainable operation, or “greening,” of laboratories addresses concerns that laboratories utilise considerable non-renewable resources and generate significant amounts of emissions and waste. Part of the process of sustainable development has been formalised as “Environmental Procurement”, which compares environmental impacts when selecting products and services, and influences the way facilities are designed and operated. Including the selection of equipment and products, environmental procurement is increasingly factored into regulations, organisational initiatives, and procurement documents. Of all of the laboratory environments, laboratory animal facilities or vivaria are often vilified as some of the worst offenders in terms of sustainability and energy consumption. While this is largely true in the current built environment, this need not be the case for future animal facilities.
For countless years, the design of animal facilities has isolated itself within time-tested methodologies that have become a “black-box” approach to how vivaria are designed and constructed. Concrete masonry-wall partitions, epoxy floors, windowless environments, 15-20 air-changes per hour, and inefficient equipment have too often been the norm. Using the concept of environmental procurement as a way to approach re-thinking the vivarium will lead to more environmentally responsible facilities. By doing so, we devise a number of simple, easily implemented approaches to more environmentally responsible animal care facility design that will advance the image beyond that of the “energy pig”.
In the automobile engineering industry, when the challenge is to reduce the weight of an automobile by a pound, the approach is often to reduce the weight of sixteen components by an ounce. This anecdote has applicability in the design of more sustainable and energy responsible vivaria. By looking for small opportunities in every aspect of vivarium design, facilities can be designed and constructed as energy efficient structures without compromising their high-performance requirements.
Across the design of over 100 animal facilities in the past decade, we’ve observed that the operational costs of a vivarium will exceed the initial capital investment in approximately 10–15 years for an average size facility of 15,000 gsf. For specific pathogen free (SPF) or biocontainment facilities, the operational costs can eclipse the capital facility costs by 7–10 years depending on facility size and operational regimens. The typical lifespan of the major systems serving a vivarium is twenty years and total life expectancy is generally 40-50 years. In other words, emphasis on first-cost alone is a short-sighted approach to vivarium design. A large part of the operational cost is based on the energy consumption of the facility to sustain operations and therefore these areas are natural targets for reduced consumption.
The process towards a more environmentally responsible vivarium starts at the planning phase where an institutionally unique utilisation and future planning analysis is required. Trending animal facility usage and capacity of an institution is a good place to start. In our practice, there have been underutilisation rates of vivaria as high as 80% at major institutions. In even the most energy efficient scenario, significantly underutilised space will result in needless consumption. Accurate need determination requires careful examination of both internal and external trends in usage. Commonly, institutions that are planning new vivaria benchmark themselves against similar institutions. While external benchmarking has benefits, it can lead to misperceptions about the types and quantity of spaces required. It is suggested that an institutional animal usage master plan be undertaken to determine what the immediate, mid-, and long-term needs are projected to require. This process should incorporate the institutionally specific needs and projections.