When Chuck Blanchett Jr. and his team first joined the International Freezer Challenge, he did not expect it to become the foundation for a larger operational transformation at Boston Children’s Hospital. What began as a small effort focused on friendly competition to improve freezer maintenance and energy reduction eventually evolved into a broader culture shift.
Today, Blanchett oversees the hospital's Green Labs program as manager of research facilities, leading initiatives that range from plastics recycling and equipment optimization to procurement improvements and researcher engagement. But his approach differs from many traditional sustainability programs.
“For a long time, sustainability has been framed as something extra,†Blanchett says. “Extra effort, extra cost, extra responsibility for researchers. But when it's done right, sustainability isn't a burden. It's actually a lever for better operations.â€
That operational mindset helped his team move sustainability from a side initiative into something embedded within daily lab workflows.
Starting with a relatable problem
Like many research organizations, Boston Children's Hospital began with “low-hanging fruitâ€: reducing waste and lowering energy consumption. But Blanchett quickly realized researchers responded more strongly when sustainability efforts connected directly to protecting samples, reducing equipment failures, or improving reliability.
One early breakthrough came through freezer management.
Ultra-low temperature freezers consume enormous amounts of energy, often comparable to a single-family home. But Blanchett found that energy savings alone were not always enough to motivate behavioral change.
Instead, his team focused on freezer reliability and sample protection.
The International Freezer Challenge gave labs a structured framework for conducting preventive maintenance, defrosting freezers, organizing inventories, and purging old samples. Boston Children's Hospital started with only eight participating labs and unexpectedly won the top international clinical award that year.
That early success helped create momentum.
Participation grew from eight labs to 20, then 32, and eventually 54 labs across the organization. More importantly, the initiative produced measurable operational improvements.
The organization reduced freezer-related alarm incidents by roughly 70 percent after implementing stronger preventive maintenance and monitoring practices.
For Blanchett, that became an important lesson for driving change.
“If people feel like [sustainability] is extra work, we've already lost,†he says.
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Using data to make sustainability visible
Blanchett credits much of the program's growth to data visualization and relatable storytelling.
The Green Labs team monitored freezer temperatures, electricity consumption, and plug loads to identify aging equipment and potential maintenance risks before failures occurred.
But the data alone was not enough. Researchers needed context.
One year, participating labs saved approximately 650,000 kilowatt-hours of energy through freezer optimization efforts. Rather than presenting that figure alone, Blanchett translated it into something easier to understand: the equivalent daily energy use of 89 homes.
“That fact alone really opens the eyes of researchers… and leadership,†he says.
The team applied that same strategy elsewhere. When Boston Children's Hospital recycled more than five tons of lab plastics during a pilot program, Blanchett compared the weight to roughly 11 full-grown cows.
The comparison generated laughs during presentations, but it also made the scale of the effort more tangible.
Building momentum through pilot programs
Many of the hospital's largest sustainability successes began as small pilot projects. Blanchett uses a pilot, prove, scale approach.
The plastics recycling initiative started on only two floors within one building. The team surveyed researchers, evaluated vendor capabilities, and secured grant funding to support the initial rollout.
After demonstrating success, the program expanded to 32 floors across four buildings.
The same philosophy shaped other operational changes, including equipment shutdown programs, outlet timer distribution, and fume hood sash campaigns.
One particularly successful initiative involved reusing cold-shipping ice packs. Instead of sending thousands of pounds of ice packs into the waste stream, the hospital partnered with local cheese farms that reused them for product shipments.
To date, the organization has diverted more than 6,300 pounds of ice packs through the partnership.
“We don't have to pick them up. We don't have to throw them away,†Blanchett says. “They take them away for free. So it's a win-win situation.â€
Turning sustainability into culture
Blanchett believes the hardest part of sustainability work is not technology. It is culture.
“People are busy. They're skeptical. They don't think it applies to them,†he says.
To overcome that resistance, his team focused on simplicity, visibility, and habit formation.
One example is the hospital's “HEDGE†training framework: highlight, educate, demonstrate, guide, and enable. The goal is to integrate sustainable behaviors into normal operating procedures rather than treating them as temporary campaigns.
The team also works closely with environmental health and safety groups to align sustainability initiatives with existing operational priorities. Fume hood sash campaigns, for example, improve both energy efficiency and laboratory safety.
That alignment helps sustainability feel less like a competing priority and more like part of the lab's core mission.
For lab managers hoping to build similar programs, Blanchett recommends starting small, choosing projects that solve operational pain points, and communicating results in ways that resonate with researchers.
“What started with a few small ideas became a system,†he says. “We improved efficiency, reduced risk, saved costs, and built a community around how we work.â€
