Is Your Sustainability Strategy Keeping Pace With What Life Science Researchers Actually Want?

Every April, Earth Day offers a natural moment to reflect on where things stand and where they might be heading. For the life sciences, 2026 is shaping up to be a genuinely interesting year on the sustainability front. The conversation is not new, but the context around it is evolving in ways that are worth paying attention to. Regulatory frameworks are taking shape, procurement practices are maturing, and researcher expectations built up over several years are beginning to align with real market movement.

This Earth Day, BioInformatics is sharing some perspective on what is happening on the ground in life science labs: what researchers are looking for, where there are opportunities for suppliers to do better, and what the shifting landscape might mean for vendors thinking strategically about sustainability.

A Shifting Regulatory Landscape

The policy environment around sustainability in the life sciences has been evolving, and 2025 and 2026 have brought some notable developments worth keeping an eye on. In Europe, new consumer protection directives are moving toward standardized, third-party-verified environmental claims. This shift will gradually raise the bar on how vendors communicate their sustainability credentials in EU markets. Self-certification and broadly worded “eco-friendly” language are coming under greater scrutiny, nudging the industry toward more consistent and transparent reporting.

In the United States, the ACT Ecolabel 2.0 launched in 2025 and is now recommended by the U.S. EPA. It is the only independently verified eco-label for laboratory products, with over 1,700 products from 60 companies currently carrying the label. It is gaining traction as a practical tool for procurement teams looking to make more informed purchasing comparisons and, for vendors, represents a growing opportunity to differentiate in a meaningful, credible way.

At the institutional level, several major biopharma companies have incorporated sustainability expectations into their supplier programs, including emissions targets, ESG disclosures, and environmental performance criteria. Approaches vary by organization and geography, and the space is still maturing, but the directional trend is consistent: sustainability is becoming a more routine part of how suppliers are evaluated and selected.

What Researchers Are Actually Saying

Policy shifts and procurement mandates tell one part of the story. The other part, arguably more important for vendors trying to make product and marketing decisions, is what researchers themselves think and want.

BioInformatics has been tracking researcher perceptions of sustainability in the life sciences since 2022, and the picture that emerges from our longitudinal data is one of persistent, genuine intent. The desire for sustainable lab practices is widespread across academia, pharma/biotech, and applied/industry segments. Environmental responsibility consistently ranks among the top two corporate social responsibility priorities for scientists, on par with economic responsibility and well ahead of ethical or philanthropic concerns. This is not a niche issue among a sustainability-minded minority; it reflects a mainstream expectation of the scientific community.

And yet, a significant portion of researchers who have tried sustainable solutions have encountered barriers that have slowed adoption, with cost cited most often as the primary reason, particularly for recycling programs and biodegradable alternatives. The gap between what researchers want and what they are actually purchasing is driven less by indifference than by a perceived need for the market to make sustainable options more viable and accessible.

Our research has also found that this dynamic is not uniform across geographies or generations. European researchers tend to prioritize reducing consumable usage above all else, while researchers in Asia Pacific place greater emphasis on recycling. Millennials view supplier sustainability efforts more favorably and are more likely to factor them into purchasing decisions, while Gen X, which makes up a large share of current lab decision-makers, tends to be more measured in its assessment of supplier sustainability claims. These distinctions matter when vendors are deciding how to position and communicate their sustainability programs across different customer segments.

Where Suppliers Have Room to Grow

When researchers share their views on how life science suppliers are performing on sustainability, the picture is mixed and genuinely useful for vendors trying to understand where to focus. In our research, more than half of respondents felt suppliers still have meaningful room to improve overall, though many acknowledged that progress has been made in recent years, particularly around packaging. The areas researchers most consistently point to as opportunities are consumer education on sustainable product options and making recycling easier. This is a signal that the path forward for many vendors involves not just product investment, but how programs are communicated and made accessible.

Plasticware and product packaging are the areas researchers most consistently identify as needing the most improvement, findings that have held steady across multiple years of our research. For vendors in these categories, this represents both a challenge and a meaningful opportunity to differentiate.

There is also a longer-running expectation gap worth acknowledging. In research conducted in 2022, a significant share of researchers anticipated meaningful increases in supplier sustainability efforts over the following few years. By 2024, fewer said they had actually witnessed that level of progress. Researchers nonetheless remain optimistic about near-term improvement, and 2026, with its evolving regulatory and institutional backdrop, offers a real opportunity for suppliers to deliver on those expectations in ways that will be noticed and appreciated.

The commercial case for doing so is genuine. Our research consistently shows that sustainability efforts strengthen a supplier’s reputation among researchers, and that customers are willing to purchase more and pay a modest premium from vendors who can demonstrate credible, consistent sustainability progress. The key word is credible: researchers want data, transparency, and follow-through, not just messaging.

The Questions Worth Asking

Earth Day 2026 arrives at a moment when the sustainability conversation in the life sciences is becoming more substantive, more grounded in data, more embedded in procurement, and more connected to real purchasing decisions. For vendors who have been building out their sustainability programs, this is an encouraging development. For those still working out where to focus, it is a useful prompt to get more specific about what their customers actually need.

Some of the most valuable questions vendors can be asking right now include:

• How are researcher attitudes toward sustainable purchasing evolving, and is willingness to pay a sustainability premium shifting as institutional mandates grow?
• Which sustainability credentials and certifications are researchers and procurement professionals actually aware of and looking for, and how does that vary by region or segment?
• How does sustainability performance factor into brand perception and customer loyalty in your specific product categories?
• Where are the gaps between what your customers want from you on sustainability and what they currently experience?
• How do sustainability priorities differ across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific, and how should regional strategies reflect those differences?

These are not questions that secondary research or general industry benchmarks can answer well. They require direct access to the scientists, lab managers, and procurement professionals who are navigating these decisions every day.

How BioInformatics Can Help

BioInformatics has been studying sustainability perceptions in the life sciences across multiple years and geographies, building a longitudinal view of how this market is evolving. Our proprietary panel of more than 55,000 vetted scientists and biomedical researchers gives vendors direct access to the customers who matter most, not a general online panel, but qualified professionals who use, evaluate, and purchase the products you make.

We work with life science vendors at every stage of their sustainability journey, from syndicated benchmark research that provides industry-wide context, to custom studies designed around the specific questions your brand and product portfolio face. Whether you are looking to understand how your sustainability efforts are perceived relative to competitors, identify which investments will resonate most with your customers, or develop messaging that connects across different researcher segments, we bring the panel, the methodology, and the life science market expertise to help you find answers you can act on.

Sustainability is becoming a more meaningful part of how researchers evaluate and choose their suppliers. This Earth Day feels like a good moment to ask whether you have the customer insight you need to navigate that shift with confidence. We would be glad to help you find out.

BioInformatics, part of Science and Medicine Group, is the leading research and advisory firm serving the life science and diagnostic industries. To learn more about our sustainability research capabilities or to discuss a custom research engagement, visit us at: https://www.scienceandmedicinegroup.com/bioinformatics/.