Research is, among other things, an act of consumption. Laboratories buy instruments, reagents, plasticware, computers and countless consumables; much of it is purchased new, used for a single project or a fraction of its working life, and then discarded or left idle. The environmental cost of all this purchasing — in manufacturing, transport, packaging and waste — is substantial, and one of the less visible contributors to research’s overall footprint. While much attention has gone to energy and emissions, the question of what research buys, and what happens to it afterwards deserves its own focus. Sustainable procurement and circular-economy thinking offer practical ways to reduce that cost without compromising the science, and this article explores them through the sustainable research domain of the CASRAI Dictionary.
What sustainable procurement means
Sustainable procurement is the practice of taking environmental and social considerations into account when deciding what to buy, from whom, and on what terms — alongside the usual concerns of cost and fitness for purpose. Applied to research, it asks questions conventional purchasing often skips: Is this item genuinely needed, or could an existing one serve? Is there a more durable, repairable or efficient option? Can it be bought in a way that reduces packaging, transport or waste? The principle is not to stop buying what research needs but to buy more thoughtfully — treating each purchase as a decision with consequences beyond the budget line, and turning sustainability from an afterthought into a routine part of how research is resourced.
The circular economy applied to research
Underpinning sustainable procurement is a broader idea: the circular economy. The conventional model of consumption is linear — take resources, make products, use them, throw them away — and research follows this pattern as much as any sector. The circular economy proposes an alternative in which materials and products are kept in use as long as possible through reuse, repair, sharing, refurbishment and recycling, so that value is retained rather than discarded. Applied to research, it reframes equipment and materials as resources to be kept in circulation rather than consumed and binned. An instrument that is shared rather than duplicated, repaired rather than replaced, or passed on rather than scrapped stays in productive use far longer. This is the conceptual foundation on which the specific practices below rest.
Equipment sharing and reuse
Among the most practical circular-economy measures in research is equipment sharing. Laboratories and institutions accumulate equipment that sits idle much of the time, while elsewhere the same items are bought new. Sharing schemes and equipment marketplaces — whether within an institution, across a region, or more widely — let researchers find, borrow, share or acquire equipment that already exists rather than purchasing afresh. The benefits are both environmental and financial: fewer new items made and bought, better use of what is already owned, and savings that can be redirected. Closely related is the reuse of equipment and consumables where it is safe and appropriate — passing on instruments a group no longer needs, redistributing surplus supplies, and choosing reusable over single-use items where the science permits. These are often the simplest, highest-impact steps a laboratory can take.
Repair over replacement
A circular approach also means valuing repair. The default response to a failing instrument is often to replace it, but repair — restoring and maintaining equipment to extend its working life — keeps resources in use and avoids the cost of manufacturing a replacement. Maintaining equipment well, choosing suppliers that support repair rather than obsolescence, and upgrading components rather than replacing whole systems are all part of a circular research economy. Repair is not always possible or economical, but treating it as the first option rather than the last is a meaningful shift away from the throwaway model.
Frameworks that embed these practices
Sustainable procurement and circular practices are most durable when they are built into recognised frameworks rather than left to individual goodwill. Laboratory sustainability programmes increasingly include procurement and resource-use criteria. The Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF), widely used in higher education to help laboratories improve their sustainability, includes criteria touching on procurement, equipment and resource use, giving laboratories concrete actions and a way to track progress. Certification and improvement programmes such as My Green Lab similarly encourage more sustainable practice across laboratory operations, including the purchasing and use of equipment and consumables. These frameworks matter because they translate the broad ideas of sustainable procurement and the circular economy into specific, assessable steps, and they create recognition and momentum that help good practice spread and stick.
Part of a wider sustainability effort
Sustainable procurement sits within a larger picture of research sustainability that also encompasses energy, emissions and the environmental cost of digital infrastructure — topics addressed in our other coverage of the field. Procurement and the circular economy are a distinct and sometimes overlooked piece of that picture, focused on the material flows into and out of research, though the two are connected: avoiding a new purchase avoids the emissions embodied in making it. It is one of several levers institutions can pull, and one where the actions are often concrete, immediate and within a research group’s own control. Our learning resources set these practices alongside the wider sustainability agenda.
A consistent vocabulary for sustainable practice
For sustainable procurement and circular practices to be tracked, compared and recognised across institutions, the information involved — equipment records, sharing arrangements, sustainability criteria, reuse and repair activity — must be described consistently. That consistency is what the CASRAI Dictionary works towards: a shared vocabulary so that the data describing sustainable research practice is understood the same way wherever it is recorded. And because sustainability is increasingly part of how research is planned, resourced and assessed, the contributions and activities involved can be described within the same shared framework used across the research record — the CRediT taxonomy and its full set of contribution roles. Research will always need to buy, build and equip; doing so within a circular, sustainable model is how it can do that while taking responsibility for the resources it consumes.