• Question: does your work create more greenhouse gasses?

    Asked by ThomasBradley to Adam, Adele, Deborah, Matt, Samantha on 21 Jun 2017.
    • Photo: Matthew Lee

      Matthew Lee answered on 21 Jun 2017:

      Personally no, but the lab we do experiments in does as we use lots of equipment that uses lots of energy. So it depends on where we get that energy from, i think some of the energy we use is renewable but a lot of it isnt. Theres a big drive at the University of Bristol to make labs more eco friendly so we have lots of new more efficient equipment that uses and wastes less energy

    • Photo: Adam Hargreaves

      Adam Hargreaves answered on 21 Jun 2017:

      Hi Thomas,
      We try to be as energy efficient as possible, but a lot of the experiments do use a lot of electricity (a genome sequencing machine usually runs for about 11 days non-stop) and a LOT of plastic. SO MUCH PLASTIC. Maybe in future we will be using bioplastics which are made from extracting carbon dioxide from the air, that way we’re reducing greenhouse gas emissions and also using a biodegradable and recyclable alternative. We have a lot of research programs working on renewable energy and reducing environmental change at Oxford but I’m afraid I don’t know much about them.

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