Sustainable ANFF

Making our practices more environmentally responsible

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Making our cleanrooms green rooms

The Environmental ANFF Expert Working Group comprises engineers from each node who focus on making our practices more environmentally responsible. The team meet quarterly to establish new initiatives and report on ongoing ones.

Current and planned activities are listed below, but we’re always open to new ideas and to bringing our clientbase into the Environmental ANFF group. Get in touch if you have ideas or suggestions for greener lab spaces.

Activities (started September 2020 - in progress at MCN)

  • Waste reduction awareness campaign via signage throughout the cleanroom (Started in September 2020 – in place at MCN)
  • Plastic sample/wafer container reuse program (Started in September 2020 – in place at MCN)
  • Silicon fragment collection program (started in May 2021 – in progress at MCN)
  • Soft-plastic recycling program via Red Cycle (Started in July 2021 – in place at MCN)
  • Non-contaminated lab soft-plastic recycling program (Started in July 2021 – in progress at MCN)
  • Waste sorting station (batteries, soft-plastics, stationery, small electrical equipment) (Started in July 2021 – in place at MCN)
  • Creation of a community garden (one garden bed at the moment to provide basil, cherry tomatoes, radishes and chillies) (Started in March 2021 – in place at MCN)
  • Annual Ride/walk/public transport-to-work events (held annually at MCN)
    • Resulted in an increase of 200% of the number of staff members regularly riding their bikes to work.

Outreach and communication (started March 2021)

  • Resulted in an increase of our members by 325% percent with members from different roles and from all five continents.
  • MCN’s 2021 team counted 13 members (5 PEs, 2 casual, 3 academic residents, 2 industry clients, 1 facility manager)
  • Creation of a community board in our kitchen area to communicate our actions with all users
  • Use of Slack for team communications and staff communications
  • Use of project management tool Asana to keep track of actions completed
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