We are committed to driving sustainable development across our production activities.
We continue to integrate safety, health and environmental considerations into our process, product and packaging development and in the construction of new facilities and refurbishment of existing ones we are building sustainable assets for our business. These approaches will enable us to reduce the amount of waste we generate and our emissions to air and water, and effectively manage biodiversity, land and water use. We are also working with third parties who produce some key chemical intermediates and products on our behalf to measure the environmental impact of our outsourced manufacturing.
In our 2008 FOCUS employee opinion survey, 82% of employees who responded (86% response rate) expressed confidence in AstraZeneca being an environmentally responsible company. This maintains the high positive response in this area (also 82%) from the previous survey in 2006.
SUSTAINABLE PRODUCTION STRATEGIES
Strategies to support sustainable production include our 'SHE Triggers' model, which enables potential safety, health and environmental issues to be identified and designed out of our manufacturing processes for new active pharmaceutical ingredients at an early stage. This model was further developed in 2008 to incorporate an environmental risk assessment tool to enable our scientists to prioritise environmental issues for their projects. The 'SHE Triggers' concept has now been extended to develop a model for use in the development of secondary manufacturing processes and pharmaceutical products, including environmental assessment of packaging and devices.
Our ‘Green Chemistry Network’ links environmental specialists with chemistry and engineering organisations within process development to help promote the principles of green chemistry and engineering. Biannually all scientists in our Global Process Research and Development function have the opportunity to attend training to raise awareness of how they can minimise the environmental impact of the manufacturing processes they are developing. This includes education on the tools that our Green Chemistry Network has devised. Some of these are described below.
Solvent Selection Guide
This guide provides information to promote the selection of solvents with the minimum SHE impact when developing our processes. In 2008 the guide was expanded to give our scientists information on the life cycle environmental impacts due to solvent manufacture to highlight the importance of recycling and recovery.
Acid/Base, Alkylating Agent and Amide Formation Reagent Selection Guides
These guides provide environmental information to promote careful consideration of environmental impact when reagents are chosen.
Substance Avoidance Database
This tool lists all substances on relevant regulatory lists from around the world to highlight substances that should be avoided when developing manufacturing processes. For the most problematic substances, alternative choices are offered for the process development scientists. The database is continually updated.
Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) Removal Technology Selection Tool
This tool aids selection of the most appropriate treatment technology for effluent streams containing APIs generated from manufacturing processes. One of our stated “Pharmaceuticals in the Environment” objectives is to pursue site-specific opportunities to minimise the amount of product lost to wastewater during our manufacturing activities.
PROMOTING GREEN CHEMISTRY AND ENGINEERING
In addition to our internal efforts we are an active partner in the American Chemical Society Green Chemistry Institute (ACS GCI) Pharmaceutical Roundtable. This coalition between the ACS GCI and nine multi-national pharmaceutical corporations (at the end of 2008) has a mission to catalyse the implementation of green chemistry and engineering in the pharmaceutical industry globally. The group is active in process intensity benchmarking, the development of common green chemistry tools and funding academic research in the UK and the US. To date four collaborations looking to develop more sustainable chemistries in key research areas have been initiated.
Along with other members of the ACS GCIPR based in the UK, our scientists contributed to delivering a Green Chemistry summer school for a group of undergraduate students in 2008, building on the success of a first event in 2007. This event will be repeated in future years.
The content of this page was externally assured by Bureau Veritas, February 2009.
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