Issues of sustainability are becoming increasingly significant for pharmaceutical manufacturers. How far are they committed to changing the way their business affects the environment asks Lu Rahman?
Sustainability has become an integral part of the manufacturing process for the majority of industries and the pharmaceutical sector is no different. Eco credentials span a range of procedures. Maximising energy efficiency, keeping a close eye on a carbon footprint and examining the efficiency within the supply chain, are just some of the examples of the way pharmaceutical manufacturers are reducing their company’s effect on the environment and in the process, reducing costs. Initiatives in green chemistry and solvent reduction have also become key focal points for the modern pharmaceutical manufacturer.
Globally pharmaceuticals contribute a significant proportion of healthcare associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. According to the Sustainable Development Unit (SDU) – which has been working with a range of pharmaceutical companies to find ways to reduce the carbon footprint of pharmaceuticals – in 2012 21% of GHG emissions of the UK’s NHS were attributable to pharmaceuticals. In 2012 the SDU formed an international alliance that created the first document providing a method for consistently calculating the carbon footprint of pharmaceuticals and medical devices.
The move towards a more sustainable industry has been significant. In 2013 the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) collaborated with the Carbon Trust to help pharmaceutical companies quickly estimate the carbon footprint of tablet medicines distributed in blister packs.
The tool, a first for the pharmaceutical sector, was developed in collaboration with the Carbon Trust and funded by the ABPI, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen-(J&J), Eli Lilly, and Pfizer. Not only did it help companies work out the carbon footprint of tablet medicines in blister packs simply but it also demonstrated the industry’s commitment to help reduce its impact on the environment through sustainable practices including management of carbon footprints.
A range of data was incorporated into the model which covered carbon emissions for Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs), transport and distribution, formulation and packaging, retail and use phase and finally, the disposal of the packaging.
Stephen Whitehead, chief executive, ABPI, said at the time: “ The development of this tool forms part of the ABPI’s commitment to help its members to identify carbon hot-spots for products and areas for potential carbon footprint reduction. These may include raw materials manufacture, selection of materials and transport.”
Hugh Jones, managing director, business advice at The Carbon Trust commented: "There is an increasing awareness among pharmaceutical companies that emissions outside their direct control can represent opportunities to improve cost efficiencies and reduce emissions. Mounting pressure to demonstrate environment impacts of products to customers is also a key driver for action across the sector. The launch of the foot printing tool is a really positive step towards helping these companies to understand the embodied carbon of different drugs and shows what can be achieved through sector-wide collaboration.”
Greener energy generation
Using resources more efficiently and complying with regulatory frameworks are increasingly important in pharmaceutical manufacture. Using cleaner forms of energy generation is another way to aid the sustainability process.
Earlier this month FuelCell Energy revealed that it is to install a combined heat and power (CHP) system at Pfizer’s Connecticut site. The aim is for energy costs to be reduced as well as allowing Pfizer to hit clean air initiatives. The system will work independently from the grid supplying power to the company’s 160 acre facility. Importantly it also means that Pfizer will be able to achieve its commitment to sustainability through low carbon and efficient energy generation.
Pfizer is transparent in its sustainability goals. By the end of 2020 the company has pledged to reduce it greenhouse gas emission by 20%, reduce the amount of waste disposal by 15% and reduce its water withdrawal by 5%. The company’s green aims don’t end there as it has specified that 100% of its key suppliers support its code of conduct and manage their environmental impacts through effective sustainability programs. It also specifies that 90% of its key suppliers have themselves set in place goals for greenhouse gas emissions, waste disposal and water withdrawal.
‘Admirable goals’
Last year in The Guardian, Alison Moodie described the way in which Dow Chemical Company had “set itself a sweeping series of sustainability goals, which it claims will not merely reduce its own impact but also drive environmentally responsible practices at other companies.”
These goals included the creation of ‘breakthrough innovations’, ‘valuing nature’ and engaging employees for impact’ with the aim of both improving lives and delivering cost savings. In fact, what is setting Dow Chemical Co apart is its pledge to improve the lives of 1 billion people while making savings of $1bn.
Neil Hawkins, Dow’s corporate vice president and chief sustainability officer, told the newspaper: “We’re really focusing on taking the science and technology of Dow and devoting our efforts to finding new ways of doing business that will help companies collectively change our role in society.”
The measures were praised by sustainability experts. Moodie wrote: “Sheila Bonini, CEO of The Sustainability Consortium, called the plan ‘admirable’, while David Levine, co-founder and CEO of the American Sustainable Business Council, called the goals ‘encouraging’.
With the focus often on drug development, new formulations and even merger and acquisitions, the sustainability decisions pharmaceutical companies are making can often be overlooked. But with companies such as Dow Chemical Co making such grand promises, it seems that pharmaceutical companies may be taking the lead, providing examples to help improve the environment and our lives.
Similarly, GSK has an equally transparent procedure when it comes to sustainability. Its CEO, Sir Andrew Witty has been reported as saying: “How we operate is just as important to us as delivering financial performance.”
The company says its longterm goal is to be carbon-neutral by 2050. In order to reduce its water impact it is exploring ways to reduce water use and to halve
its operational waste by 2020.
GSK is doing this by adopting what it says are four simple steps to ‘eliminate, reuse, recycle and generate energy from waste’. It also says it is applying green chemistry principles to the manufacture of its products in a bid to diminish and / or remove hazardous chemicals from its drug development and discovery process.
With this aim in mind, GSK set up a Green Chemistry Performance Unit (CPU), in 2012 to look into the way it can replace hazardous chemicals with lower-impact ones.
Recognise and reward
Each year Recipharm recognises work being carried out in the environmental field with its International Environnmental Award. It says the aim of this accolade is to ‘encourage and inspire best practice and innovation in order to promote good examples and to encourage environmental dialogue within the pharmaceutical sector’. Recent winners have included Ludwig Metz, associate director environmental, Health & Safety, Bristol–Myers Squibb, for his example of how sustainability activities and competence can inspire his own company as well as universities, pharmacies and organisations to make positive sustainable changes.
Development of cleaner systems
Last year the University of Manchester announced that researchers had developed a novel biocatalytic system that potentially allows for the efficient and environmentally benign production of organic chemical compounds. The findings were published in the journal Science.
Amines are key intermediates for the synthesis of a plethora of chemical compounds at industrial scale and are used in the production of active pharmaceutical ingredients, among others. However, these requisite amines are scarce in nature.
Although various methods have been developed in the past decade to produce these specialised high-value chemicals, they require long chemical synthetic routes involving complex reaction steps with potentially toxic side-products and waste streams.
Researchers at the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology (MIB), in collaboration with BASF, have developed a system that replaces these methods with a clean biocatalytic route whereby high value amines are synthesised from low cost alcohols by the coupling of two enzymes, namely an ADH (alcohol dehydrogenase) and an AmDH (amine dehydrogenase) in the presence of ammonia. Normally these enzymes would require excessive amounts of expensive co-factors to drive the individual reactions but these co-factors are recycled through the coupling of ADH and AmDH in a one-pot reaction whose sole by-product is water.
This new route offers potential economic as well as environmental benefits and will provide opportunities for industrial exploitation, including the synthesis of new chemical libraries that will support industrial and academic drug discovery programmes.
Developing the use of biocatalysts within the chemical manufacturing industry could lead to efficient production routes to high yields of complex chemicals, whilst using less energy and generating less waste than conventional processes.
Professor Nicholas Turner explains the importance of this process: “This fundamental research builds on the MIB’s expertise in biocatalysis and forms the basis for the development of new applications in the sustainable manufacture of fine and speciality chemicals. The development of this new generation of biocatalysts should lead to economic and environmental improvements in the manufacture of a range of chemicals, including pharmaceuticals and polymers. It also offers the possibility of circumventing current industrial processes which are reliant on scarce natural resources.”
The road to a sustainable industry is definitely long but thanks to the combined efforts of industry and academia, the sector is showing a positive approach to sustainability as it sees the value in protecting the environment, its reputation, society and its profits.