Medical Research Council survey

This survey is being carried out independently and anonymously for the UK's Medical Research Council. There is a page with more information. If you have further questions, please contact via email either the MRC project team at (enable javascript in your browser to see the email address) or the survey administrator at (enable javascript in your browser to see the email address).

NB: This survey is closed.

Background information

The medical research sector has particular challenges related to environmental sustainability. Research makes a sizeable contribution to the UK's carbon emissions, whilst high levels of energy and water consumption, single use plastics and disposal of hazardous and biomedical waste, all make the barriers to enacting change problematic.

The Medical Research Council (MRC) works to improve the health of people in the UK, and around the world, by supporting excellent science, and training the very best scientists. As part of UKRI, the MRC is committed to improving environmental sustainability across the research it conducts and funds, as well the medical research sector as a whole.

The UKRI Sustainability Strategy commits the MRC and all other councils to achieve net zero carbon by 2040, as well improving biodiversity, reducing waste, improving the way we travel and embedding environmental sustainability across our decisions and investments.

In the past, the MRC has funded best practice to overcome challenges to environmental sustainability in life and medical research. Now, in order to better understand the sectorial challenges related to transforming medical research to a more environmentally sustainable position in future, the MRC is undertaking a 'landscape review'. The initial stage of this exercise is to seek views from those involved in the research via a questionnaire.

The emphasis of the questionnaire is to understand the major gaps, policy requirements, and other challenges, to the improvement of environmental sustainability of medical research. The results from this will help to focus future efforts on areas of priority need and ensure that support can be developed to overcome those barriers which are the most complex in nature.

We are grateful to everyone who gives up their time to contribute to this valuable research and will publish the findings as soon as we are able.