A sustainable approach to laboratory experimentation

Sustainability is currently a general concern in society and in particular in the use of laboratories for educational purposes. Although laboratories are unavoidable facilities for education, they often produce waste resulting from students' experiments. To contribute for sustainable solutions in education, the use of remote laboratories instead of the traditional hands-on laboratories should be considered in every engineering course. It is precisely this aspect that is discussed in the current paper. Some comments about the importance of sustainability in education are made. Later, it is described the use of a remote laboratory named VISIR in a course held at the Polytechnic of Porto -- School of Engineering, for the conduction of an electronic experiment named Schmitt Trigger. At the end, some comments about the contribution of this remote lab for sustainability in education, are provided.