NEB®Environmental Philosophy

Learn how NEB protects the environment, both locally and globally.

Script

Narrator:
The people at New England Biolabs believe science should make a positive impact in the world, without making a negative impact on the planet. This passion for sustainable practices has created a culture of good global citizenship. Here, decisions are made with the environment in mind. From the first product catalog printed on recycled paper, to the waste water treatment system at its LEED certified facility.

Bob Trigilio:
The idea was to build a building that pretty much any way you stood, you would be able to feel like you were outside. We had to redesign the building to conserve two trees, which were 300 year old Beech trees.

Donald Comb:
We put it on the internet and asked people to provide plans, and they did. When they came back, if we didn't like them, we said, "Oh no, you have to change it because we want to save this Beech tree and we want to save this Beech tree. You have to design around these things." That's the way it happened.

Nicole Nichols:
We have an extensive recycling program that started out very simple and has actually grown quite large to encompass most of the lab plastics that we use. The recycling project also entails our styrofoam boxes, our shipping boxes. It was one of the first of its kind to be launched as well as the longest maintained recycling program. Customers can return the boxes to us and then we reuse them and ship them out again.

Nicole Nichols:
We also have programs that people don't typically think of as environmental objectives, but the freezer programs that we have actually allow us to reduce shipping costs and shipping energy and shipping materials as we ship to our customers.

Narrator:
Designed from the ground up, the New England Biolabs Research and Production facility is built on a foundation of sound, ecological practices. With LEED and ISO 14001 certification, even the buildings are doing their part to help the planet.

Jim Ellard:
This building, that we're in right now, is a LEED certified building, Leadership in Energy Environmental Design. Very few laboratory buildings are LEED certified. It's more difficult for a laboratory to attain LEED certification because of the chemicals they use, because of all the equipment, the heat and the electricity they use.

Nicole Nichols:
The waste water treatment facility here is fairly unique, it's actually set up in a wetlands type process and it treats all of the water that comes out of our entire campus here. It pulls from the Ipswich River, our entire water needs, but then it gives back to that same river system. It is monitored significantly and actually generates water that is cleaner than the water that comes to us in most cases.

Nicole Nichols:
Every time that we put out a catalog, we focus on an environmental issue. We pick a number of organizations that we decide to fund and focus on the concerns that they have.

Donald Comb:
We certainly hope that that's a direction all companies will take, that they have to preserve biodiversity and they have to preserve the environment.

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