Sustainable Clinical Trials Knowledge Hub
Healthcare accounts for 4-5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Clinical trials are an often overlooked contributor to these emissions, but every year trials emit an estimated 100 million tonnes of CO2e, a footprint comparable to the annual emissions of an entire country, Belgium.
What is the knowledge hub?
This hub promotes adoption and scaling of leading practices for low carbon clinical trial design and operations by bringing together insights from clinical researchers, clinicians, industry partners, academics and regulators. It is a repository of resources including implementation cases and guidance for the entire clinical trial supply chain and is for everyone involved in clinical research.
Sustainable Clinical Trials Community of Practice (CoP)
What it is: A collaborative LinkedIn group which aims to amplify and accelerate initiatives that will reduce the negative environmental impact of clinical trials.
How it can help: The CoP was created to disseminate leading practice and innovation to remove barriers and accelerate action that will reduce the negative environmental impact of clinical trials, share knowledge and foster collaboration among all the stakeholders involved in clinical trials.
Who it’s for: Anyone interested in taking action to make clinical trials more environmentally sustainable.
Interested in joining our LinkedIn Community of Practice?
If you would like to join:
Clinical Trials Carbon Calculator
What it is: A free-to-use carbon calculator for clinical trials aligned to the Sustainable Healthcare Coalition methodology.
How it can help: The calculator follows a stepwise process to quantify carbon emissions from the separate activities (modules) associated with clinical trials to estimate the overall carbon emissions. The calculator supports identification of carbon emission hot spots, guiding users regarding the greatest opportunity for reducing the carbon emissions from clinical trials.
Who it’s for: All stakeholders involved in the design and management of clinical trials, including suppliers, to ensure clinical trials carbon emission reduction at speed and scale.
Click here to find out more:
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Upcoming Events
Sustainable clinical trials resource library
Explore our full collection of clinical trial-related materials, including implementation cases and publications.
Guide
Sustainable Trials by Design
July 2026 | A structured, repeatable approach to measuring the carbon footprint of clinical trials
Guide
Assessing carbon emissions of clinical trials
July 2026 | A structured, repeatable approach to measuring the carbon footprint of clinical trials
External link
Climate footprint of industry-sponsored in-human clinical trials: life cycle assessments of clinical trials spanning multiple phases and disease areas
BMJ | Feb 2025 | "This study aims to calculate the global warming potential, in carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent emissions,...
Guide
Minimising waste in clinical trials
July 2026 | Protocol-level decisions have the greatest leverage on the volume of consumables, samples, and packaging a trial goes...
Knowledge hub feedback
This Hub is a living library of information and we love feedback! Please let us know if there’s a question you would like answered or if you have any resources you can share.
