An internet swap shop allows colleagues to trade molecular probes for laser printers. It's a great green idea, writes Kevin Fong
There is a pleasant, constant stream of messages that trickles from the physiology department at University College London. These messages offer items of equipment cast off by members of the faculty and list objects that are desired in return. I've come to monitor these e-mails with some interest. It's like Noel Edmonds's Swap Shop for academics: "Have old desktop computer, need test tube rack"; "Have unwanted laser printer, will swap for Petri dish and a couple of vials of Cyto 84."
I noticed some 16-track magnetic tape on offer a few months ago. I'm assuming that it had been used to record scientific data and not to lay down a rock'n'roll demo, but you never know. There was a box of Betamax videotapes going begging, too. Presumably future generations can look forward to people giving away wheelbarrow-loads of old-fashioned iPods. You seem to be able to trade anything if you wait around long enough. Last week a computer monitor, today a set of balances, tomorrow who knows?
It is a very civilised way to run a department - stopping us from topping up the local landfill while encouraging a sense of community. In the days before e-mail, this stuff was presumably traded via chance encounters in a corridor, and I'm sure much of it found its way to the skip. But now the power of the worldwide web has helped to create a thriving, eco-friendly marketplace. Admittedly, the trade is in a specialised pool of items: molecular probes, calcium electrodes and strange chemical reagents. This is not the sort of stuff you could hawk at the car-boot sale on a Sunday morning. But within this micro-community, the bizarre supply and demand curves are well matched. It's like eBay without the hard currency; we could perhaps call it esoteric-bay.
In an increasingly disposable world, this in-house recycling is a neat stroke against the current. For a bunch of theoretically intelligent, well-informed people we at times behave in ways that are deeply unfriendly to the environment. It seems wrong to work in a place where the environmental sciences guys across the road are investigating the disappearance of the Antarctic ice sheet while we throw out a truckload of perfectly serviceable electronic paraphernalia, chug down a fourth polystyrene cup of coffee and leave for home with an empty laboratory lit up like a Christmas tree (complete with rows of computers that haven't been switched off since the bloke from IT installed them).
I'm as guilty as the next person, but the forests of single-sided output from the printers have begun to tweak my conscience. I was passing Canary Wharf last week in the middle of the night thinking how wasteful it was to have the thing standing empty, glowing like some monument to the god of everlasting daylight. Since then, I've come to realise that the university is probably no better, just a low-rise version of that luminous monstrosity, smeared into the sprawl of central London.
Doubtless my newfound eco-resolve will last about as long as your attention span for this article, but one has to try. I'll start with the small things, the lights and the computers. Perhaps I'll plug myself into the department's electronic swap shop, too. Here's my first post: "Have dodgy stethoscope with missing ear pieces. Want U2 concert tickets. Preferably UK dates." Any takers?
Kevin Fong is a physiology lecturer at University College London, a junior doctor and co-director of the Centre for Aviation, Space and Extreme Environment Medicine. He is a fellow of the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts.