The Concordat for the Environmental Sustainability of Research and Innovation Practice has been developed by the UK research and innovation (R&I) sector and is designed to ensure research and innovation continues to play a critical part in understanding how our planet is changing, while helping the sector to act responsibly to protect and promote our environment.

By signing the concordat, signatories:

• recognise the need to change how we conduct research and innovation as well as promote wider solutions
• agree to take shared action now and in the future to reduce and eliminate our own negative environmental impacts and emissions and achieve the transition to sustainable practices.

Katie Clegg, Director of Sustainability at Leeds Trinity University said: “The Concordat is based on a series of commitments designed to show leadership for sustainability and climate change, combined with actions to reduce environmental impacts of research activities, collaborate and share learning and establish new ways of working that promote greater positive impact.

“By signing the Concordat, this strengthens LTU’s commitment to sustainability and to creating value through our activities, linking in with the delivery of the new University’s Sustainability Strategy - the Creating Sustainable Value Framework, which will be released this year.

“Whilst a number of the commitments represent longer term actions, such as our approach to combatting climate change and Net Zero, there are actions focusing on how we embed activities into our policies, process and procedures for things like travel, purchasing and equipment re-use, which through collaboration, we can develop sooner.”

Katie added: “We have a way to go to fully demonstrate and implement all of the Concordat aims, this is an important step change in LTU’s commitment to add sustainability value to society and the planet and will see positive change across the whole institution.”

The signing of the Concordat is the result of a collaborative project involving the Sustainability Team, Research Office and wider research community. Next steps will include the development of tools, resources and training which can support with funding applications where they ask about environmentally sustainable practices, help design and manage research projects to reduce negative impacts and ensure positive value to the environment.

One such sustainability tool is currently being trialled by our Biomedical Science team, who are starting to implement the Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF) in our new biomed lab, with the aim to reach Bronze accreditation by the end of 2025.