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Sustainability at the ICR

Sustainability at the ICR means acting now, in line with the UN Sustainability Development Goals, to manage economic, social and environmental issues within our organisation and globally, so that both now and in the future, we can continue to make the discoveries to defeat cancer.

Video: Meet some of our staff who were involved in the sustainability action plan. | Video transcript

Sustainability matters to us

Sustainability has significant consequences for cancer research – the link between the poor air quality and certain cancers, the importance of a healthy natural world and biodiversity for discovery of new compounds for innovative cancer drugs and treatments.

The climate and biodiversity crisis are the main challenges of the 21st century, bringing pandemics, extreme climatic events and putting life, as we know it, at risk. We believe that the scientific research and education sectors should be leading the way to ensure a liveable planet for future generations. In 2020, following many other organisations, we declared a climate emergency which marked our first step in accelerating climate action.

Our action plan

Sustainable Discoveries is the ICR’s action plan for how we will respond to the climate crisis and other sustainability challenges. The plan reflects how we integrate sustainability principles into our research and teaching practices – aiming to develop lower impact ways of undertaking laboratory science, developing more efficient buildings and facilities, reducing our impact on the planet and ensuring our people have the requisite skills and knowledge to make a difference.

We have mapped our plans against the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals - a global programme for sustainability covering themes from health and wellbeing to climate action, with each goal supported by a number of targets running through to 2030. The ICR is working towards 14 of these targets.

'Sustainable Discoveries' has 4 pillars:

Sustainable Foundations

To achieve our sustainability goal, we must address key issues such as governance, accountability, training, awareness and other systems to support sustainability - which we lay out in the first pillar of our action plan.

Sustainable Operations

In the Sustainable Operations pillar of our action plan, we lay out how we plan to transform our estates facilities and support our people across the ICR to be more sustainable.

Sustainable Science

The Sustainable Science pillar outlines how we aim to undertake our research to defeat cancer whilst reducing environmental impacts.

Sustainable Procurement

In the final part of our action plan, we define how we aim to improve the environmental and social impacts from our supply chain – the largest share of our carbon footprint.


Download Sustainable Discoveries (PDF)


Concordat for the Environmental Sustainability of Research and Innovation Practice

The ICR welcomes the opportunity to sign up to the Concordat for the Environmental Sustainability of Research and Innovation Practice. Developed by the UK research and innovation (R&I) sector, this voluntary concordat sets out a shared desire that sees continued innovative and leading research being carried out in a more environmentally responsible and sustainable way.

The key areas for progression within the concordat include:

  • leadership and system change,
  • sustainable infrastructure,
  • sustainable procurement,
  • emissions from business and academic travel,
  • collaboration and partnership,
  • environmental impact and reporting data.

We are committed to sustainability in everything we do. There is a significant alignment between goals set out in the concordat and our ‘Sustainable Discoveries’ action plan. Substantial progress has already been made in many of these areas, but for the ICR, the added engagement from staff at investigator/team leader level, through sustainability requirements set in grant funding applications, is really important for joining up sustainability awareness and action from the grassroots level to the senior management level.

Our progress

The large laboratory footprint and the associated resource use, energy, single use plastics and water this incurs, makes laboratory certification a key element for delivering sustainable science. The ICR’s grant funders, Welcome and CRUK are both signatories of the concordat and will require laboratory certification to Silver level for Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF) or My Green Lab by the end of 2025 for funding. Currently in Chelsea 24% of labs have LEAF bronze and 59% have LEAF silver, in Sutton 25% of labs (140 scientists) have My Green lab certification (2 Platinum, 6 Green). Additionally, the ICR will be launching Green DiSC certification, in the aim of reducing the environmental impacts of computational activities, in dry labs or within the core digital services function.

Letter of commitment to the priorities of the Concordat

26 June 2024
The Institute of Cancer Research

Letter of commitment to the priorities of the Concordat for the Environmental Sustainability of Research and Innovation Practice

I, Professor Kristian Helin, on behalf of the Institute of Cancer Research confirm our commitment to the priority areas outlined in the Concordat for the Environmental Sustainability of Research and Innovation Practice.

The Institute of Cancer Research fully supports the priority areas outlined in the concordat. We will deliver against all the priorities in practice and recognise our responsibilities as a signatory, as set out in the concordat.

By signing this concordat, we recognise the need to change how we conduct research and innovation as well as promote wider solutions. We also agree to take shared action now and into the future to reduce and eliminate our own environmental impacts and emissions and achieve the transition to sustainable practices.

Sustainability at the Institute of Cancer Research means ‘acting now, in line with the UN Sustainability Development Goals, to manage economic, social and environmental issues within our organisation and globally, so that both now and in the future, we can continue to make the discoveries to defeat cancer’. We believe that we need to embed sustainability in everything we do, to deliver world leading cancer research with minimum environmental impact. We embrace the priority areas set out in this document, many of which are mirrored in our current sustainability action plan and acknowledge the importance of this concordat for driving sustainability for all organisations in the research and innovation sector.

Yours sincerely

Kristian Helin's signature 

Professor Kristian Helin
Chief Executive and President