Very proud of our contributions at the EMBO/EMBL Sustainability Research Symposium: Fit for the Future! On the 29th of April as well as the EMBO Policy workshop on the 30th of April. It is very inspiring to have been united with many like-minded people of the green science community! 

The sessions showed a nice overview of the Sustainable Research field from sustainable practices and grassroots initiatives to top-down approaches and the role of funders. As a shortlisted candidate of the EMBO award for lab sustainability, Florijn Dekkers showed her personal journey starting as biomedical researcher to what Green Labs NL is today. She highlighted our recently developed educational tools and brand new Green Labs NL Community platform!

Some key take-aways from the symposium:

• Everyone, from researchers to institutions and funders, are taking actions to make research more sustainable. 
• Certification (LEAF, My Green Lab certification and GreenDiSC), CO2 calculators (e.g. 1point5 | Applications) and training tools (e.g. E-learnings and guidelines from UMCU & Green Labs NL Planetary Health and Education – Green Labs NL & CO2 Assistant) are driving significant change
• The SPARK-HUB is under development; a community-driven platform aimed to centralize certification, calculators, training and other expertise. Education of (future) scientists is important for the continuation of the development of sustainable research. More info coming soon! 

On Wednesday, the symposium was followed-up by a policy workshop attended by Green Labs NL members Florijn Dekkers (UMCU, Institute 4 a circular society) and Thomas Freese (RUG). This policy workshop brought together sustainability representatives from research-performing organisations (RPOs), bottom-up initiatives, funders, publishers, and tool developers to explore the role of labs in RPOs’ sustainability transition. The workshop’s outcome will be recommendations for RPOs, including principles for successfully integrating tools into their sustainability strategies. It builds on a discussion of last year’s workshop focusing on funders, which resulted in the Heidelberg Agreement (DOI: doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13938809).

Thanks to the organizers of these events: Brendan Rouse, Marta Rodriguez-Martinez, Phillip Weber, Martin Farley and Valeria Scagliotti, Sandra Bendiscioli, Sels, EMBO and EMBL.