Home  Responsibility Sustainable production Waste management
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In line with our commitment to Sustainable Production we continue to focus on reducing the amount of waste we generate. Our waste is categorised as ‘hazardous waste’ or ‘other waste’ according to national legislation, which varies in its definitions. The majority of our hazardous waste consists of solvent and aqueous effluent streams from manufacturing activities. Other waste includes general waste from our facilities around the world.
The primary objective in waste minimisation is waste prevention. Where this is not practicable, we strive toward the reuse and recycling of materials, including energy recovery from the incineration of waste streams. Programmes designed to reduce the amount of waste we generate include the continual improvement of existing production processes, minimising the environmental burden of new production processes under development, integration of environmental considerations in purchasing and internal waste awareness programmes.
Third parties manufacture some key intermediates and products on our behalf. The contribution of waste data from outsourced manufacture is not included in the figures below but we continue to track and report third party waste production in the Sustainable Production section.
The amounts of hazardous and other waste that our activities have generated in recent years are shown in the table below.
Waste disposal | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | Change |
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| Hazardous waste (ktonnes) | 28.3 | 30.0 | 28.4 | 29.4 | 27.9 | -5% | | Index (tonnes/$m sales) | 1.50 | 1.40 | 1.18 | 1.11 | 0.94 | -15% | | Other waste (ktonnes) | 30.2 | 30.3 | 30.8 | 30.9 | 29.7 | -4% | | Index (tonnes/$m sales) | 1.60 | 1.42 | 1.29 | 1.17 | 1.01 | -14% | | Total waste (ktonnes) | 58.5 | 60.4 | 59.2 | 60.3 | 57.6 | -4% | | Index (tonnes/$m sales) | 3.10 | 2.82 | 2.47 | 2.28 | 1.95 | -14% | | The reference point for change is 2006. The figures in the table above have been rounded. Please note that percentage changes have been calculated using the data prior to rounding. |
Waste disposal routes for our hazardous and other waste in 2007 are shown in the chart below. We differentiate between the material recycled and the waste incinerated with energy recovery. It should be noted that these figures do not include the very large amount of material reused and recycled within our facilities, such as solvent recovery and reuse, since this material is excluded from our definition of waste.
Waste disposal 2007
 The amount of hazardous waste recovered in 2007 (including material recycling and incineration with energy recovery) was 51%. Total waste recycling rates in 2007 were 58%.
AstraZeneca recognises that waste also arises as the result of construction activities undertaken on our behalf. Annual data for construction waste has therefore been collated and this shows that during 2007 228 ktonnes were generated. This is greater than 5 times the amount generated in 2006 (33.3 ktonnes) due a large volume of soil and rock that was required to be cleared as part of a major construction project at one of our R&D sites. The vast majority of all the construction waste generated (>99%) was non-hazardous and sent for recovery/reuse. |
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