MedTech Sustainability by Design
Sep 30, 2026 · 48 min · 14 segments
From September 2026, the EU stops accepting green claims that nobody has verified. Self-certified labels are banned. Fines run up to 4% of annual revenue. I talked to James Connelly, CEO of My Green…
James ConnellyGuest
Lucas PianegondaHost
MyGreenLab certifies laboratories, but also certifies products with the ACT label.
Could you explain, you know, the difference and how they feed into each other?
Yeah, so MyGreenLab, which is really our flagship program is an operational certification for laboratories.
So we actually work with the scientists themselves to improve the efficiency of laboratory operations.
And through relatively simple behavior change, as well as some more complicated things like changing your procurement system, changing your inventory system, we see around $60,000 of savings every year for our commercial laboratories.
And as we rolled that program out around the world, we quickly learned that you can't have a green lab unless you can buy green laboratory products.
So we launched ACT in 2018, really to be able to provide that transparency to purchasers so that they could evaluate products and make a decision about what is gonna be the most sustainable choice that also meets their lab's functional expectations.
There was a lot of sort of green, Let's call them or or other ways in which manufacturers would self certify and make claims about their products.
But ACT was the first third party independently verified certification to provide that consistent apples to apples comparison.
So people could have confidence when they're making decisions that they're truly choosing a more sustainable product.
Yeah, so the ACT label is probably what our listeners are most interested in.
So would you explain what the ACT label contains? It is like a 100-point score.
the company itself, its corporate sustainability goals, to the manufacturing of the product, to the ingredients that are used in the product, to its impact in use, if it's something like an ultra low temperature freezer where it's using a lot of energy during usage, and then finally to end of life.
And all that data is evaluated and summarized on the label itself, which is like a scorecard or a very transparent nutrition chart score so you could, or like nutrition facts that you'd find on a box of cereals.
The hundred point scale is weighted towards overall life cycle analysis and impact for that particular product category.
So in some, it allows you kind of at a quick glance, not only at the total product score, but also within each one of those individual categories, make a determination of whether that product is more sustainable or less than a similar product.
And I think that comparative analysis is really the power of the certification platform and the usefulness of it for labs when they're making purchasing decisions.
MyGreenLab certifies laboratories, but also certifies products with the ACT label.
Could you explain, you know, the difference and how they feed into each other?
Yeah, so MyGreenLab, which is really our flagship program is an operational certification for laboratories.
So we actually work with the scientists themselves to improve the efficiency of laboratory operations.
And through relatively simple behavior change, as well as some more complicated things like changing your procurement system, changing your inventory system, we see around $60,000 of savings every year for our commercial laboratories.
And as we rolled that program out around the world, we quickly learned that you can't have a green lab unless you can buy green laboratory products.
So we launched ACT in 2018, really to be able to provide that transparency to purchasers so that they could evaluate products and make a decision about what is gonna be the most sustainable choice that also meets their lab's functional expectations.
There was a lot of sort of green, Let's call them or or other ways in which manufacturers would self certify and make claims about their products.
But ACT was the first third party independently verified certification to provide that consistent apples to apples comparison.
So people could have confidence when they're making decisions that they're truly choosing a more sustainable product.
Yeah, so the ACT label is probably what our listeners are most interested in.
So would you explain what the ACT label contains? It is like a 100-point score.
the company itself, its corporate sustainability goals, to the manufacturing of the product, to the ingredients that are used in the product, to its impact in use, if it's something like an ultra low temperature freezer where it's using a lot of energy during usage, and then finally to end of life.
And all that data is evaluated and summarized on the label itself, which is like a scorecard or a very transparent nutrition chart score so you could, or like nutrition facts that you'd find on a box of cereals.
The hundred point scale is weighted towards overall life cycle analysis and impact for that particular product category.
So in some, it allows you kind of at a quick glance, not only at the total product score, but also within each one of those individual categories, make a determination of whether that product is more sustainable or less than a similar product.
And I think that comparative analysis is really the power of the certification platform and the usefulness of it for labs when they're making purchasing decisions.
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