Nature is critical for the health of people and our planet. We depend on the natural environment for clean air, water, food, a stable climate, and to make medicines. Nature and biodiversity loss, however, are putting human and planetary health at risk. Investment in protecting and restoring the ecosystems and natural resources our collective health and society rely on is urgently needed to support thriving communities and prosperous economies.
Our ability to discover, develop and manufacture life-changing medicines both depends on and impacts nature. Environmental sustainability is therefore crucial for the healthcare sector and public health. This interdependency means we have a responsibility to accelerate action to protect and restore nature across our value chain.
Committing to action on nature and more sustainable healthcare
We are following the science to deepen our understanding of our relationship with nature, assess our impacts and dependencies and identify where we can take action to reduce our environmental footprint. We are committed to disclosing these dependencies and impacts, and became one of the early adopters of the Task Force for Nature Related Disclosures (TNDF) in January 2024.
Halting and reversing nature loss is critical for human health. We’re committed to taking action across our value chain, and to working with our peers to improve the health of people and our planet.
Working in collaboration to fight nature loss
To unlock impact at scale to halt and reverse nature loss, we must act together. That’s why we are partnering with the World Business Council on Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and our industry peers to develop a Roadmap to Nature Positive for the pharmaceutical sector, identifying key impacts, dependencies and priority actions we can take to drive positive impact.
Driving environmental sustainability across our value chain
We’re also delivering progress across our organisation. Here are some examples of our own commitments to protect and restore nature:
We’re sourcing and using natural resources more sustainably
We are committed to sustainable sourcing and work closely with suppliers to promote high ethical and environmental standards. We recognise that our operations require the consumption of natural resources such as water. That’s why we aim to decouple water use from our business growth and at the end of 2023, we had reduced water use by 19.5% as compared to our 2015 baseline.
In China, for example, a new wastewater treatment plant at our Wuxi site, enables treated wastewater to be reused, which has reduced the site’s current water footprint by over 5%.
Through assessing our key materials to understand which have natural origins, we aim to tackle the risks of deforestation and other biodiversity pressures within our supply chain. For example, we are working to address our sector’s dependency on horseshoe crab blood – currently a regulatory requirement for Bacterial Endotoxin Testing to ensure our medicines are safe for patient use. Our aim is to transition to more efficient testing methods that require less reagent whilst working to shift to synthetic alternatives.
We’re also working with suppliers to ensure that over 95% of our paper-based product packaging materials are supplied from sustainable sources with assurances from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), or Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC).
We’re minimising pollution and reducing waste
From research and development to manufacturing, and from patient use to disposal, we aim to manage and minimise environmental pollution. Managing pharmaceuticals in the environment (PIE) is a critical aspect of how we reduce adverse impacts on water resources and maintain water quality.
To minimise the release of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) – biologically active molecules in pharmaceutical compounds that may interact with and impact wildlife and biodiversity when in the environment – we run a safe API discharge programme for both our own production sites and our suppliers. Our goal is to ensure that 100% of site discharges and over 90% of supplier site discharges comply with safe discharge concentrations to protect environmental health.
Our industry-leading EcoPharmaco Vigilance (EPV) dashboard enables users to visualise the relative risks of our APIs that are found in the environment. We were the first pharmaceutical company to transparently share environmental risk assessment (ERA) data on our website.
As the industry lead for the PREMIER project (Prioritisation and Risk Evaluation of Medicines in the EnviRonment), we are collaborating with our peers to contribute to greener drug design.
To further reduce our impact, we’re also taking measures to reduce waste. Since 2015, we have reduced waste by 13.2%. Our focus is on enabling greater circularity, including for plastics which are used widely in the development and production of medicines. By adopting a plastics hierarchy to achieve our ambitions, we aim to reduce their use, increase recycled content and substitute those that are challenging to recycle with alternative materials
One example of such efforts is in Sweden, where we’re working with pharmaceutical retailer Apoteket and a recycling company, to collect and recycle plastic covers of used inhaler devices to transform them into new material used for cable drums. This successful collaboration has expanded from 5 to 19 pharmacies in the Stockholm region since 2023, with one in three inhalers being handed in to pharmacies, and processed into high-quality recycled plastic material.
We’re investing in nature restoration
We’re working collectively with stakeholders, to protect and restore ecosystems through a focus on water stewardship and preserving biodiversity.
Starting in 2024, we are investing up to $5m per year to fund nature and water stewardship projects through our annual Climate Adaptation and Nature fund. In the US, we’re working with the National fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) to restore crucial beach habitat for horseshoe crabs, Red knots and other shorebirds in the Delaware watershed. In Spain, we are funding the construction of a wetland in Barcelona. Using native species, the wetland will improve water quality in an area heavily influenced by treated wastewater.
And through AZ Forest, our global reforestation and biodiversity programme, we will plant 200 million trees across six continents by 2030, restoring over 100,000 hectares of land. Co-designed with planting experts and local communities, the programme delivers natural forest restoration and agroforestry. AZ Forest projects aim to support nature and communities by helping to create habitat corridors, build ecological resilience, increase species diversity, and promote sustainable livelihoods and provide nutrition.
Since its launch in 2020, AZ Forest has planted over 19.9 million trees across Australia, Brazil, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Rwanda, the UK, and the US. AZ Forest seeks to support the recovery and protection of endangered species, such as the sandhill dunnart, malleefowl, honey possum and black-gloved wallaby in Australia.
We’re committed to conserving and enhancing native habitats at our sites through local Biodiversity Action Plans, helping to create and maintain refuges for flora and fauna, and preserve links with the surrounding environment via green corridors of uninterrupted habitat.
By embedding sustainability into everything we do – from lab to patient – and working in partnership, we are committing to play our part to protect and restore nature for a healthier future.
