The Concordat for the Environmental Sustainability of Research and Innovation Practice has been co-developed by the UK research and innovation sector with the aim to carry out research in a more environmentally sustainable way.
Since we signed up to the Concordat in February 2025, our Environmental Sustainability in Research Working Group has continued to oversee actions to support it. These actions have been developed across several University teams, including Estates & Facilities, Procurement, Research & Innovation Services, and our academic departments and faculties.
We completed institutional sign up to the Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF) in 2025.
The Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF) is an accreditation scheme led by University College London. It provides a framework of actions for labs to become more sustainable by becoming more efficient in the use of plastics, water, energy and other resources.
Since signing up, we have been focussing on inducting our first cohort of labs. These come from right across our departments, in both the Social Sciences and Science Faculties.
In 2026, we aim to expand the number of labs working towards LEAF accreditation and advertise the scheme to a wider audience.
We will also investigate how we can engage with other green accreditations for our research-delivering labs, such as the Green DiSC scheme, which aims to make computing more sustainable.
We have refreshed our internal sites to provide information about sustainable research practice for our community.
We are investigating the possibility of introducing training modules on environmental sustainability in research or incorporating elements of it into our more general environmental sustainability training offering. We also plan to provide guidance for how our researchers can incorporate environmental sustainability into the design of their research and in applications for funding.
We are watching with interest the development of tools and resources across the sector, such as the University of Exeter's TRACE carbon emissions tool and the UK Research and Innovation-developed SPARKHub platform, as useful opportunities for the sharing of best practice.
Conducting research-related travel sustainability is essential to our ambition to reduce our carbon emissions and to reach Net Zero.
We have centralised our travel booking system to make it easier to monitor and to identify areas where we can make positive changes.
A dedicated Steering Group is working to launch the next iteration of our Integrated Sustainable Travel Plan and a new Business Travel Policy in 2026. These will be instrumental in supporting us to make sustainable choices when conducting research-related travel.
Our Sustainable Procurement Steering Group is working to update the Sustainable Procurement Policy, which will help to ensure that procurement decisions in research and innovation practice are represented.
We have investigated ways to address the use of single use plastics in our labs. Progress has been made on creating central stores of lab supplies within departments. The hope is that this will make recycling and take-back schemes easier to implement in the future.
Initial communications to the research community on our sign up to the Concordat will be followed with more targeted communications to engage our research community.
We would like to continue to work with our strong network of Environmental Champions to advocate for environmental best practice within academic departments.
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