October 2026 This report presents the findings of our BIG Clinical Trials Sustainability Survey. The survey gathered 181 responses from clinical trial professionals across five continents. Respondents worked for sponsors, CROs, investigational sites, laboratories and supply vendors, on both commercial and publicly funded trials. The results show a community that is convinced of the case Continue reading “The Environmental Sustainability Gap in Clinical Trials: Workforce Attitudes, Barriers, and Emerging Practice from an International Survey”
Resource Category Archives
Systematic, contextual, and individual influences drive trialists’ behaviour relating to greener trial design and delivery – A qualitative study
Journal of Clinical Epidemiology | Oct 2026 | To identify the key behavioural determinants that influence how people working in clinical trials (‘trialists’) design and deliver greener trials.
Carbon Calculators for Healthcare
The growing demand for carbon accounting has driven a proliferation of carbon calculators enabling organisations to calculate their overall carbon footprint or wider environmental impact. Given the number of carbon calculators now available – some extending beyond carbon to other environmental impacts – this landscape review assesses 21 tools. The tools reviewed span eight levels of measurement across healthcare: care pathways, clinical trials, pharmaceuticals, medical technology, products, healthcare organisations, clinical specialties, and project/service evaluation. Each tool is reviewed against a consistent set of criteria to understand how well the current landscape serves the range of users and use cases now demanding carbon and other data from the health sector.
Carbon footprint of clinical research: a systematic review and quantitative synthesis of estimates, sources of variation and emission hotspots
BMJ | Oct 2026 | Nekouei Shahraki M, Van Bodegraven L, De Haes F, et alCarbon footprint of clinical research: a systematic review and quantitative synthesis of estimates, sources of variation and emission hotspots
6 things you can do to reduce the environmental impact of clinical research trials
Imperial | Sept 2026 “Clinical research trials are an essential way to advance medicine and develop treatments that can help people live longer, healthier lives.”
SHC Partner Engagement Meetings
2025 – Spring Partner Engagement Meeting held on 29th April
Sustainable Clinical Trials by Design
July 2026 | A structured, repeatable approach to measuring the carbon footprint of clinical trials
Assessing carbon emissions of clinical trials
July 2026 | A structured, repeatable approach to measuring the carbon footprint of clinical trials
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, from all in-scope activities involved in phase 1, 2, 3 and 4 clinical trials spanning multiple disease areas.”
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 on to generate.
