Inside XTREAM’s latest workshop

Yesterday, Thursday 22 October, we came together for our Workshop on Green and Sustainable Sampling to share ideas and explore how we can reduce the environmental impact of sample collection and analysis. Missed it? Don’t worry, we’ve rounded up the highlights from each talk: from drone sampling in remote environments to rethinking what happens once samples reach the lab. Ready to catch up?

How can we collect samples in vulnerable environments while minimising our impact? Following a welcome from our coordinator, NORCE Senior Researcher Antonio Garcia-Moyano, Stian Solbø explored how drones can help us do just that. Curious about how drone sampling works? Take a look at our earlier post, Drone sampling: reaching the remote. Olivier Müller (University of Bergen) then took us to Svalbard, sharing perspectives on improving sampling: from navigating access permits to sharing data.

But greener sampling doesn’t stop once a sample reaches the lab. Sigfrid Kjeldaas introduced the ten principles of green sample preparation, prompting us to rethink how we handle and process samples. Dorinde Kleinegris explored how miniaturised, high-throughput analytical technologies could support more sustainable approaches. Looking further ahead, Garcia-Moyano considered how we can preserve XTREAM samples for the long term and why material transfer agreements (MTAs) matter for their future use.

The workshop concluded with a discussion on external versus internal standards and the development of best-practice principles for the project. Building on the view of sustainability as a guiding principle of sample preparation, we noted that awareness of guidance on greener practices remains limited among researchers. With this guidance in mind, we will work to embed these principles in our approach to sampling and sample use, both within and beyond XTREAM, while helping communicate them more widely to raise awareness and encourage their adoption across the research community.

Meetings like this give the XTREAM team space to share perspectives, learn from one another and turn our shared commitment to sustainability into practical steps towards greener research.