Achieving Gold LEAF accreditation in a teaching laboratory: embedding sustainable practice through a whole-team approach

Conference item : Poster

The high throughput of teaching laboratories creates resource-intensive environments, with significant energy and material consumption, and waste generation. Embedding Green Chemistry principles within laboratory teaching is therefore essential in order to reduce environmental impact and to build students’ understanding of sustainable scientific practice. The Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF) provides a structured approach to support the integration of sustainable practice into laboratory environments. While common in research laboratories, the above-mentioned challenges make accreditation of teaching laboratories less common. Herein, we describe the process of achieving Gold level LEAF accreditation within our undergraduate teaching laboratory. A central feature of this approach was a whole-team approach, seeing technical and teaching staff, alongside students, as key stakeholders. Systematic review of our practical course led to targeted interventions, including scaling down experimental procedures without compromising learning, designing linked experiments in which products from one practical are used as precursors in subsequent sessions, and promoting a culture of sustainable decision making among both staff and students to create a culture of responsible use of energy and lab consumables. This process demonstrates that fostering a shared culture of sustainability enables the effective embedding of Green Chemistry principles across a large teaching operation and for ambitious sustainability standards to be met in teaching laboratories. Our strategy for implementing the requirements of Gold LEAF accreditation not only reduce environmental impact, but enhance, rather than constrain, student experience by ensuring Green Chemistry principles are authentically present in our course.

Authors: Wilmore, J

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Reviewed (other)
• Publisher: University of Oxford
• Article number: 19
• Place of publication: Oxford, UK
• Publication date: 2026-05-08
• Acceptance date: 2026-04-12
• Event title: CLEAR Symposium
• Event location: online
• Event website: https://clearsymposium.weebly.com/
• Event start date: 2026-05-07
• Event end date: 2026-05-07
• DOI: 10.5287/ora-eo5m49ebv
• Language: English
• Keywords: undergraduate education; chemical education; LEAF; teaching laboratory; sustainability
• Subtype: Poster