Sustaining Sustainability: Making our world healthier and safer

by Neal Salerno, President, Eurofins Lancaster Laboratories

As businesses grow and expand their footprint, it’s essential to do so in a socially responsible manner. Embracing corporate sustainability benefits people, our planet, and even the bottom line.

This year, Eurofins Lancaster Laboratories celebrates its Sustainability Program’s 10th anniversary. What began as a grass-roots employee-volunteer Green Team, blossomed into a team of full-time sustainability staff and hundreds of employees pitching in to find ways to reduce company waste, water, and energy usage. The program also encourages and organizes on-campus and local volunteerism initiatives vital to our community’s health and well-being.

In terms of the environment, we have made significant strides towards finding ways to decrease our environmental impact as well as have a positive effect in the community. For example, we remain a sponsor for the Lancaster County Conservancy’s annual Water Week event, which promotes the importance of clean water and natural habitats through kayak paddles, guided hiking trips, tree plantings, and river cleanups. We’ve helped organize a Conestoga River clean-up for the past several years where our employees helped collect 5.5 tons of trash in just 2.5 hours at seven sites around Lancaster County.

In 2018, we were recognized in the “Best Workplaces for Commuters” program because of the various benefits we provide our employees who choose to carpool or take alternative modes of transportation such as walking, biking, or taking public transit. And we continually are in the process of researching greener on-site transportation services (electric shuttles, bike service stations, carpool/vanpool program enhancements) which strengthen our business by improving employee morale and retention, achieving cost-savings through environmentally responsible processes, and allowing us to continue offering world-class services to our ever-growing community-minded client base.

We are fortunate to have on our 50 acre campus approximately six acres of open space comprised of wetland and grassland cover. We have partnered with The Lancaster County Conservancy and The Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay to plant a riparian buffer and other native vegetation as part of a formal land management plan for  responsible maintenance of this green space. Through this partnership, we received a grant to plant 1,000 native trees and shrubs, and nearly 100 employees volunteered during a weekend to plant them all. Around the wetlands we have installed a half-mile walking path used by employees for exercise and a nice respite from the challenges of the day. This area is already home to a wide variety of plant and animal species. To this, the Sustainability Team also conducted a BioBlitz on the walking trail to identify both native and invasive species of plants, insects, mammals, birds, amphibians, and reptiles to create an even better habitat for more species. And on another part of our campus our Garden Club annually plants/maintains a 1,400 ft² garden, which consists of vegetables, herbs, fruits, as well as a native pollinator plants. This year, over 1,000 plant saplings were planted. We are recognized by the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) as a Certified Wildlife Habitat for providing food, water, shelter and places to raise young wildlife and qualify as a business partner with iConservePA to show a commitment to promoting conservation in Pennsylvania.

Stepping inside our facility, our Green recycling and conservation design initiatives were strategically infused in our newest building expansion that opened in 2019 as well as significant green improvements to renovated lab and office spaces to reduce our energy usage. (For more details see article in Spring issue of this newsletter at EurofinsLancasterLabs.com) As a member of the US Green Building Council (USGBC), we are committed to creating a sustainable environment for our employees and community by creating a healthy and efficient workplace. For example, we reduced our carbon footprint by over 25,000 pounds of CO₂ annually, implemented campus-wide recycling program, purchase new ENERGY STAR® rated equipment where possible, and are reducing water consumption through water monitoring programs and converting to LED lighting and installing motion sensors. And as part of our new 168,000 ft² expansion, we opened an onsite Wellness Center to benefit all employees at the Lancaster site by providing fitness classes and wellness resources for employees.

Beyond our campus, we have also had great accomplishments in our community involvement and student educational programs. For the past few summers, we  presented our Chemistry Magic Show to the School District of Lancaster/Lancaster YMCA Power Scholars Academy and Camp Exploration to support STEM education. Participating children of the camps were able to learn about chemistry in a safe and fun way. We continue to sponsor several STEM organizations and programs, including The North Museum’s STEM Sisters and Science and Technology Fair, The Community Action Partnership (CAP), the Lancaster Science Factory, and Junior Achievement STEM Summit to name a few. Further, we helped break ground on a new STEM learning facility at Millersville University in coordination with CAP. We also joined forces with the Lancaster County STEM Alliance to host a three-day educational Externship opportunity for 50 Lancaster County teachers, helping them better prepare students for the workforce. And we offer shadowing experiences to high school and college students as well as internships to support our growing workforce.

We have also continued our Community Heroes Program, where we organized several donation drives and service projects during the year to benefit organizations  throughout the community. We have grown our contribution to the United Way and qualified for the Circle of Honor.

At Eurofins Lancaster Laboratories, we implement conscious choices throughout our organization in an effort to reduce our impact on the environment we all share and do our best to make the world healthier and safer.