Run a pilot Freezer Challenge lab-competition participation-program focused on outreach and energy savings.The goal of this project is to educate, inform and recruit members from the lab community to participate in the International Freezer Challenge. This team would like to present the competition to a minimum of 50 labs and gain participation from at least 20 of them. The outreach component consists of personal meetings with researchers and students in the colleges and consists of marketing techniques, posters, flyers and social media to educate, this team intends to achieve winning level results: last year’s numbers are: 1st place in the organizational category was UC Davis, saving an estimated 500,000 kWh/yr and the Individual lab category was won by Hoekstra lab from Harvard, saving 13,000 kwh/yr. These savings levels calculated at our electricity rate of $0.0782/kwh equates to $39,100 and $1016.6 respectively.

The competition builds lab sustainability practices into its goals and objectives, meaning the outcomes for participating labs will be more sustainable and efficient operations. Examples of these items are improved sample storage, reduced refrigerator/freezer usage, reduction in the number of fridge/freezers on campus, defrosting freezers and organizing samples to improve capacity and operation of the units and temperature tuning for less energy consumption.