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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:
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.
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:
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:
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:
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.
Green manufacturing practices can address the energy efficiency challenges of achieving pharma sustainability. These measures can consist of:
Analysing Energy Use: Start by assessing the energy quantities your different operations consume. Set goals for reducing energy use, such as increasing a given machine’s efficiency or reducing energy expended per order. Monitor progress on these directives and strive for continual improvement.
Optimising Heat and Water Routes: Seek ways to recover heat or water expended for certain processes and apply it to other ones. Water used for equipment rinsing post-cleaning could be used to fill cooling towers, for example. Also, heat pumps can recover waste heat from steaming and use it for other processes’ heat needs.
Cleaning Steam Traps: Steam trap valves are prevalent in the steam cleaning of pharmaceutical manufacturing, and if they fail to function this can mean reduced efficiency or other equipment damage. Regular inspections of all steam traps in a facility can mitigate this.
Proactive Maintenance: Taking care of your motors, filters, and belts can help reduce the energy they consume and the waste heat they produce. Preventive or predictive maintenance programmes can achieve these efficiencies and keep your fans, mixers, and agitators running smoothly.
Renewable Energy: Pharma companies can reduce their carbon footprint by sourcing energy from renewable sources, such as wind, solar, or hydropower.