Guide to Sustainability in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Reviewed by David Carmichael, Solution Engineer (May 2024)

Sustainable development in the pharmaceutical industry is becoming increasingly important, both in the fight against climate change and in the overdue initiatives to bring medicines to all who need them. Pharma sustainability faces unique challenges in that it must avoid harmful practices while delivering helpful products. With the right drive to make profits secondary, however, sustainability in pharmaceutical industry products can be achieved.

Sustainability is always important because it is what allows any industry or aspect of life to continue. Sustainability in pharmaceutical industry companies is particularly important because they are in the business of human health. Products and practices for improving and saving lives should not in turn harm other lives and places.

Sustainable development in the pharmaceutical industry requires a holistic approach that considers the following:

• Precursor material properties and disposal requirements
• Supplier reputability
• Prices charged to patients
• Markets served and those that are underserved
• Manufacturing efficiency
• Waste produced

Pharma sustainability should be a key part of companies’ mission statements to show that their goal is to improve people’s health. This must come with demonstrable actions and results, though, or sustainability-minded consumers will seek out greener players.

The pharmaceutical industry faces a great challenge in all its chemical waste. Waste takes many forms and is often nearly inextricably linked to the delivery of safe and effective pharmaceuticals.

Manufacturing Waste: The various chemical processes required to produce medicines leave behind waste, most often in the form of solvents (essential fluids that allow medicines to form, but which stay behind in some form after the fact). Industrial waste also includes wastewater, which can contain substances such as arsenic. These substances all require careful disposal to avoid contaminating groundwater with chemical spillages and causing major public health issues.

Expired Medicines: It is a sad fact that a large proportion of medicines go to waste every year, often at hospitals that fail to use all the products they acquire. Not only does this mean producing medicine (and consuming energy) without benefit to individuals, but unused and expired medicines also need careful disposal and security to ensure they do not cause harm.

Spent Containers: The precursor chemicals for producing pharmaceuticals come in containers that retain chemical residues. These need disposal procedures as well, as do things like rags for regularly cleaning equipment.

Single-Use Packaging: Pharmaceuticals come complete with plastic bottles, plastic wrapping, desiccant pellet packets, and other single-use items that fill up landfills. Some of these even have special disposal procedures, such as used syringes.

Practices exist for safely working in extreme chemical hazards environments and mitigating the effects of chemicals on the environment. This includes PPE, training, dedicated disposal containers, hazardous waste manifests, and strict regulations. To truly achieve chemical industry sustainability, though, companies will need to adopt materials that are less hazardous to begin with and significantly reduce the waste they produce.

The design and development of pharmaceutical products has many areas where sustainability has been challenging:

• Suppliers: Medicines are made from many precursor chemical products, and they themselves have complex supply chains for their own production. As with tracking conflict minerals in discrete manufacturing, pharma companies have a responsibility to monitor their complete supply chain to ensure they are not funding dubious ethical practices
• Markets: Pharmaceutical products sometimes have poor track records for how effectively they reach their patients. Oversupplied hospitals in privileged countries lead to expired and wasted medicines while less fortunate countries go without. Developing new pharma products sustainably must plan to serve everyone who needs them
• End Users: Though pharmaceuticals can work wonders, they can cause problems for people too. Overprescription, side effects, misuse, addiction, and illicit markets are very real problems that plague many to this day. Pharma companies can be a part of the cure for this by thoroughly considering the effects of their products

Striving for energy efficiency is beneficial for all manufacturers, primarily for energy cost savings but also for reduced material wastage and improved safety. The energy-efficiency challenges pharmaceutical manufacturers face include:

• Cleaning: Guaranteeing sanitation and medical safety in produced pharmaceuticals requires tremendous amounts of water and heat. Containers, mixing equipment, and pipes all need regular cleaning, and this means expending energy on hot water and steam
• Ventilation: To keep contaminants out, pharmaceutical facilities have strict standards for air quality. This can require constant blowing, cooling, filtering, and dehumidifying facility air, all of which take energy and other resources
• Rotating Equipment: Ventilation devices require electric motors, as do the mixers and agitators of pharmaceutical manufacturing. Without proper maintenance, these devices will run inefficiently and even form safety hazards
• Cooling: Inefficiencies in process manufacturing generate heat, which must be removed, often through cooling towers. Cooling towers use large amounts of water and need regular monitoring and maintenance to prevent corrosion and the growth of algae and bacteria

Any efforts to improve pharmaceutical industry sustainability and ESG must begin with considering the needs of patients and how the development of pharmaceuticals affects individuals and their environments worldwide. By focusing on these tenets rather than just business profits, sustainable development in the pharmaceutical industry can become a reality.

What are the benefits of green chemistry? Green chemistry principles seek to diminish or fully remove environmentally hazardous substances from chemical production, thus avoiding the adverse effects of chemicals on the environment. Removing these problematic materials from the source of production fully omits their health, safety, and environmental hazards. Green chemistry has benefits all throughout process manufacturing, not just in pharmaceuticals.

Sustainability practices in the chemical industry that promote green chemistry include:

• Selecting non-petroleum-based precursors, such as renewable organic material
• Designing processes around working most or all ingredients into the finished product
• Reducing the number of chemical processes required
• Designing safer, more inert, or even biodegradable finished chemical products
• Using catalysts in chemical reactions since they can be used many times

In essence, all harmful emissions in our atmosphere come from insufficiently green chemical reactions: waste material left behind when chemicals mix to produce energy or desired materials. This makes them difficult to omit, and green chemistry difficult to achieve in practice. However, the pharmaceutical industry is starting to adopt green chemistry principles in the name of improving sustainable chemical manufacturing.

Pharma sustainability can find significant wins in the industry’s supply chain. From ingredient origins to medicine end users, sustainable practices can be deployed every step of the way.

Tracking: RFID tags and other Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technologies can reduce much of the uncertainty in the paths materials take. With these devices, you can know where your ingredients originate, plan when to expect them, and have digital proof of their journeys.

Shorter Distances: Consider using suppliers closer to your own factory. Pharmaceutical industry sustainability is about valuing people and the environment more than profits, and a good example of this is accepting spending more on closer companies.

Greener Fuels: Pharmaceutical shipping vehicles generate significant emissions, especially for medicines that must stay chilled during transportation. This can be improved with eco-friendly diesel alternatives, such as hydrotreated vegetable oil, liquefied natural gas, or compressed natural gas.

Supplier Audits: Set vendor sustainability standards and don’t do business with companies that can’t meet them. Perform regular audits of your vendors to verify their practices’ sustainability so that your own is not tarnished.