Green Training: What’s the real impact of your events?

By Dr Melissa Burke, Australian BioCommons

As a training coordinator I’m often asked about the impact of our training on people and their ability to achieve their scientific goals. But what about the environmental impact of our events?

The concept of green training was the focus of a dedicated session at this year’s Bioinformatics Education Summit, which brings together a global community of trainers and educators to develop and share guidance and best practice. The session had us discussing factors that contribute to the environmental impact of training, brainstorming green training solutions, and developing ideas for ensuring that green training policies are equitable and fair.

Encouragingly there are already a number of resources and case studies (e.g. ISCB and EMBL environmental policies) that can be used as inspiration when considering your own green training approach. Common strategies for reducing the environmental impact of bioinformatics training events include encouraging the use of sustainable transport, reducing waste and improving compute efficiency are common targets.

A notable theme from the Bioinformatics Education Summit was one of balance and equity. Choosing greener training/compute options requires money and time and can have other societal impacts. The ability to choose green options (whether as an individual or organisation) is dependent on the same factors that influence diversity, equity and inclusion.¹

For example, switching a workshop to virtual mode can seem like a quick win for the environment. It reduces travel, resources needed, and food waste from catering.² But virtual events forgo the benefits of in-person interactions and those joining from far away still face time zone inequities that can have negative impacts on health and wellbeing.²’³

So how do we save the environment while still providing great training experiences for all?

There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Instead we keep asking questions, get creative and take it one step at a time.

If you’re looking to reduce the environmental impact of your bioinformatics training events, you and your team can start by asking yourselves the questions posed at the Bioinformatics Education Summit:

• What are the sources of impact?

• How could this impact be reduced?

• What are the challenges/barriers to achieving this goal?

• What are the trade-offs?

And a bonus question that I’ll keep asking myself in my professional and personal life after listening to the discussions around equity at the Bioinformatics Education Summit: how can we equitably share this responsibility across the community?

The Bioinformatics Education Summit is an annual meeting that provides a platform for the global training and education network to discuss, develop and share guidance and best practice for training and education in bioinformatics.

Resources and guidance

EMBL

• EMBL sustainability policy

• Deutsche Bahn Event Ticket: Combining Convenience and Sustainability 

ISCB

• ISCB Environmental Policy 

• ISMB Sustainable Conference Travel Award 

Green compute resources

• How green is your compute?

• Ten simple rules to make your computing more environmentally sustainable

• The environmental impact of computational biology (webinar)

References

1. Jackson, S. Yale Experts Explain Intersectionality and Climate Change. https://sustainability.yale.edu/explainers/yale-experts-explain-intersectionality-and-climate-change (2022).

2. Wu, J. et al. Virtual meetings promise to eliminate geographical and administrative barriers and increase accessibility, diversity and inclusivity. Nat. Biotechnol. 40, 133–137 (2022).

3. Jasper, S. The effect of time zone disparity on the performance of dispersed innovation teams. (RMIT, 2019).