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Photo by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Unsplash.
Impact Laboratories, a startup verifying the environmental bona fides of some 3,800 labs worldwide, announced nearly $5 million in funding to expand its efforts.
The Spokane, Wash., company is the commercial arm of the nonprofit My Green Lab. The latter has developed international sustainability standards for resource-intensive lab research, helping scientists and institutions reduce their environmental impacts.
Impact Laboratories offers third-party verification for My Green Lab certification and provides software that helps participants reach and maintain these achievements. It also supports the use of ACT labels, which scores lab chemicals, equipment and supplies for sustainability. The startup serves labs in academia, biotech and pharma.
Pursuing greener operations benefits the environment and provides cost savings by reducing waste and energy use and through other efficiencies, proponents said.
“This investment signals a pivotal shift in how science integrates sustainability,” said James Connelly, CEO of Impact Laboratories and My Green Lab, in a statement.
The startup said it’s working with more than 40 major research institutes in four-dozen countries.
The Series A round was led by a consortium of investors including the Spokane Angel Alliance, Tacoma Venture Fund (TVF), LabX Media and Greenhouse Capital Partners.
Tom Simpson, founder and CEO of the Spokane Angel Alliance, cheered the round as a win for the growing tech hub in Eastern Washington.
“Seeing a company like Impact Laboratories scale globally from Spokane signals a new level of maturity in our startup ecosystem and investment community,” Simpson said.
Allison Paradise, a research scientist who worked at Harvard University and Leica Microsystems, founded My Green Lab in 2013.
