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Thank you to all Penn labs who participated in our second annual freezer challenge. The Freezer Challenge is part of the International Freezer Challenge supported by My Green Labs and the International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories (I²SL). Lab freezers represent a huge opportunity for energy savings and increasing lab sustainability. Thousands of scientists around the world compete in the International Laboratory Freezer Challenge each year to learn how to be more energy efficient with their lab's cold storage, improve sample accessibility, reduce risk, and save costs for their institutions.

Penn Sustainability congratulates this year’s winner – Vaughan Lab in Penn Vet. This lab team spent the spring semester taking special steps to improve freezer efficiency, including performing defrosts, participating in interactive workshops hosted by the Penn Green Labs program with Thermo Fisher Scientific and Quartzy, organizing and cleaning out old samples, and temperature tuning ULT freezers. We extend a special thank you to challenge participants this year as we face continued COVID-19 challenges, making participation even more impressive!

We look forward to the participation of even more Penn labs in the 2023 Penn Labs Freezer Challenge, starting in January of 2023. In the meantime, we hope you will explore sustainability in your own lab space and get involved with Penn’s Green Labs program. To learn more, visit our Green Labs website.