Supply chain & logistics
GSK says using a lower greenhouse gas propellant has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from its inhalers by 90%.
Measures they could require from suppliers include “sourcing raw materials, water and energy sustainably, or using recycled materials in packaging”. Pharma companies need to think both about how to bring suppliers on-board and how to measure what suppliers are doing. One way of doing this, Booth suggests, could be through encouraging suppliers to report emissions and targets via the Ecovadis website, which provides a common platform, scorecard, benchmarks and performance improvement tools. The Carbon Disclosure Project is a similar initiative. By requiring suppliers to report to platforms such as these, they can determine the extent to which they are engaging with sustainability principles.
“Once you start manufacturing a drug in a particular manner, if you want to make significant changes to that manufacturing process, you have to submit the proposed changes to regulatory bodies. ”
Yet achieving sustainability throughout the supply chain is far from straightforward. Heavy regulation restricts some of the measures companies can take. “If you look at green chemistry principles, a lot of that is about optimising the manufacturing process,” says Booth. “But once you start manufacturing a drug in a particular manner, if you want to make significant changes to that manufacturing process, you have to submit the proposed changes to regulatory bodies and that can place limits on optimisation.”
Collaboration is essential
Drug packaging is another example: “If you want to change the way you package a drug to make it more
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sustainable, you have to consider the regulations around packaging. Obviously, there are good reasons for these regulations in many cases, because you don’t want your drug to change its composition or to be consumed by children, but those policies and regulations can be an obstacle to sustainability and I think that’s why there needs to be collaboration with policy makers and regulators.” Some suppliers are small or medium-sized enterprises, Booth points out, that “might not necessarily have the capital to engage with a lot of these sustainability issues”. For that reason, she says, collaboration is essential: both pharma companies and government should be prepared to help suppliers as far as they can to meet sustainability targets so that no one gets left behind. The biggest challenge, perhaps, is the need for standardising reporting of emissions, especially scope 3 emissions. While most of the pharma companies whose policies Booth reviewed use the GHGP reporting method, they use it inconsistently: “Not everyone reports on scope 3 emissions, and not everyone reports on all the categories of scope 3, so I think improving reporting and transparency is definitely needed. Getting data from suppliers is also going to be a challenge.”
Agreement on how to implement sustainability throughout the supply chain and how to standardise measurement and reporting can only be achieved through cooperation. There are already encouraging examples of pharma companies working together. The International Pharmaceutical Aerosol Consortium (IPAC), for example, is coordinating a programme amongst large pharma companies to encourage patients to return inhaler devices to pharmacies for green disposal. The Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Initiative (PSCI), which promotes responsible practice in the supply chain, is committed to improving environmental sustainability and, at the end of 2021, created a ‘Topic Team’ to focus specifically on the “measurement, management and reduction of Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions within the pharmaceutical sector”. Pharma is a large, complex sector, in which any single company has relationships with other pharma companies, with suppliers, with regulators and with policymakers. This web of inter-relationships means that progress on sustainability depends on cooperation, says Booth.
“There are a lot of gaps in innovative solutions to this problem, so finding those solutions, collaborating with academics, with people who are researching these novel solutions, is going to be important,” she explains. “And then sharing those ideas as well – there is always competition between companies. But, in this case, I think we need to put aside this competition, because our planet is at stake.” ●
World Pharmaceutical Frontiers /
www.worldpharmaceuticals.net
WoodysPhotos/
www.shutterstock.com
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