The pharmaceutical industry has, and for now continues to be, one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. According to a 2019 study, the pharmaceutical industry produced 48.55 tons of CO2 for every US $1 million earned. The sector accounts for 4.4% of the world’s emissions and its CO2 footprint is projected to triple by 2050 if left unchecked. Fortunately, many pharmaceutical companies are heeding the call to change the old way of doing business and are developing sustainability plans: Takeda, Sanofi, AstraZeneca, United Therapeutics, Erbe, and GSK, just to name a few, have all put an emphasis on sustainability, despite a lack of a clear regulatory mandate on how to put those plans in place.
Written by a global team of pharmaceutical sustainability experts, the ISPE Sustainability Guide presents key principles and concepts to reinforce sustainable practices in the pharmaceutical industry, based on global and local guides, including existing regulations. “We had a very diverse group of authors from pharmaceutical companies of all sizes and consulting groups who wrote the Guide. The reviewers were from all over the world, which helped us include global regulatory expectations,” said Guide Co-Lead Hamid Teimourian, Energy Program (Sustainability) Lead, AstraZeneca. “Small and medium-sized enterprises at the start of their sustainability journey will benefit from this Guide and larger organizations can use it to support their sustainability strategy.”
“This Guide fills a gap the industry didn’t know it had until now,” said Guide Co-Lead Ester Lovsin Barle, Head of Product Sustainability and Stewardship, Takeda. “If companies do not begin implementing sustainability programs into their daily operations, it will not only have a negative impact on climate, but could damage a company’s image, making it hard to attract and retain talent, as well as tarnish their reputation with investors, stakeholders, and patients.”
The ISPE Sustainability Guide provides an overview of key environmental sustainability definitions to develop a cohesive industry approach that integrates sustainability into existing pharmaceutical development, operations, and quality and supply chain processes, and that provides guidance on the management of sustainability programs, including the use of metrics to measure performance.
In addition to an overview of key environmental sustainability definitions, the Guide includes information on:
- Environmental sustainability enterprise goals
- Environmental sustainability in manufacturing operations
- Environmental sustainability of pharmaceutical products
- The alignment of sustainability, quality, and regulatory aspects
- Sustainability within the supply chain
“This is not just a guide. It is your sustainability GPS. It provides a comprehensive, cross-functional framework tailored to the pharmaceutical industry and offers actionable strategies, metrics, and tools for implementation. It can help you future proof your operations and build trust with regulators, investors, and patients,” said Barle.
“All of the authors that worked on the Guide have developed and implemented sustainability programs for pharmaceutical companies and their learning and experience is reflected in it,” added Teimourian. “With this Guide, you can learn from them and develop your own strategy.”
The ISPE Sustainability Guide includes information on sustainability by design (SbD), also referred to as eco-design, which involves integrating environmental considerations into the design and development of pharmaceutical products and their packaging with the goal to minimize the environmental impact throughout the product’s life cycle, from raw material extraction to end-of-life disposal. This includes measuring the effectiveness of SbD initiatives through specific metrics and assessments and conducting a life cycle assessment (LCA) (also known as life cycle analysis) to help identify and quantify the environmental impacts at each stage of the product’s lifecycle.
“Sustainability is not just a department. It is everybody’s job, from the lab to the boardroom. It is a mindset that often requires a culture change,” said Barle. “This Guide can help you make that change.”
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