The 2020 ISPE Annual Meeting & Expo will be ISPE’s first completely virtual Annual Meeting. As always, there will be great learning and networking opportunities—in fact, the digital format offers greater flexibility for attendees.
Each year, ISPE celebrates innovations and advances in pharmaceutical manufacturing technology with its Facility of the Year Awards (FOYA) program. This year, we added a new category, Social Impact, to recognize companies that developed new standards and practices to prevent drug shortages and increase patients’ access to medicine, designed new tools or techniques that reduced the cost of drug products, or accelerated a shift to sustainable facility design that has significantly reduced environmental impact.
The decision to pursue net-zero facility design in manufacturing is complicated. There are significant challenges related to initial project costs, physical space constraints, and project site considerations—but also substantive benefits from operational savings, environmental impact, building brand trust, and working toward a more sustainable future.
Many organizations are on the right path to sustainability, but more can still be done— especially for setting and meeting net-zero targets. Although a commitment to net-zero operations is important for all industries, it’s particularly necessary for the pharmaceutical industry, with its high energy consumption, high water demands, and the use of solvents for manufacturing.
Reducing the pharmaceutical industry’s carbon footprint has become a management responsibility. This article introduces some of the key points, actual methods, and practical examples of our implementation to reduce carbon emissions from pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities in Southeast Asia.