Sustainability

Forse Group Sustainability Guide 2024

At the Forse Group, we are incredibly proud to encourage and develop sustainable working practices alongside our research goals aimed at tackling the climate change crisis. As one of our Core Values, we are strongly committed to day-to-day improvements of sustainability in our research work (see our Sustainability guide below). We acknowledge that responsibility lies with every researcher to maintain high standards in how they perform their research and thus, we strive to achieve this and ensure long term sustainable impacts to our work.

Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework - Silver Award 2023

We were awarded a Silver Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF) award as a result of a sustainability audit in 2023, and hope to achieve a Gold LEAF award in 2024. 

Forse Group Sustainability Policy – November 2023

As a group conducting research to mitigate climate-change, we recognise that this research should be done alongside embracing existing solutions.[1] We believe in the power of institutional change, and that travel, and food are the highest impact areas we can directly influence. As a result, we have decided to take a leading role in making a positive and influential impact in how the group supports sustainable travel and food choices at work.

Travel:

By far the most emissions intensive travel comes from flying, so we should aim to reduce, and/or replace, this as far as practicably possible. Where other means of travel are possible within 10 hours, these should be taken instead and flights will not be reimbursed, unless you require a flight for accessibility reasons.

Conference travel is restricted based on your research stage, due to limited benefit at early stages. In usual circumstances, students attend a maximum of one international conference a year:

• Masters Students – not expected to attend any conference
• First-Year PhD Students – UK conferences only
• Second-Year PhD Student – UK & European conferences only

Where a flight is required, consideration of online attendance is encouraged.

For conferences and other research trips, you are supported in taking additional time away from Cambridge and can work remotely to travel by a sustainable means, and further supported with the necessary financial resources, to fund more sustainable modes. Travel arrangements should be booked more than three months in advance wherever possible, to make this financially possible.

Please see appendix of the lab manual for recommended appropriate UK & European conferences.

Food:

It is widely established that plant-based food has the lowest carbon footprint, as well as being associated with lower land-use, water-use, eutrophication and zoonotic disease risks. Therefore, to incentivise this choice at group events, there is lab funding available for plant-based food and drinks.

Venues for group social events will be chosen such that there is a suitable range of plant-based options for people to pick from, including meeting other dietary requirements and allergens. Suggestions are always welcomed.