Currently many scientists are seeking ways to turn energy-hungry scientific research into a more sustainable practice. This paper uses examples from the history of science to explore potential avenues for making science sustainable. Prior to the twentieth century and 'Big Science', natural philosophers employed material culture in experimental settings with a care and thrift that has little considered by historians of science. In fact, the 'new science' of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries featured a variety of techniques and approaches to knowledge-making that might be considered ‘sustainable’ today, and this paper will examine some of them. Drawing on the world of artisanal work and domestic labour, they included the adaptation of existing space to scientific research; the use and adaptation of locally-available material resources for experimental investigations; activities of maintenance and repair; and a widespread culture of second-hand exchange and material bricolage. The focus of this paper will be a series of exchanges between the electrician Tiberius Cavallo and the physician James Lind between 1782 and 1809 that illustrate many of these practices and show their import for the making of enlightened scientific knowledge.