A Deeper Look Inside a Pill: Moving from Corporate ESG Commitments to Carbon Footprints of Drug Products
What’s the environmental impact of a pharmaceutical drug product? What role do excipients, APIs and other raw materials play in the carbon footprint of final dosages? How can the industry develop lower carbon footprint medicines in the future? These questions and more are entering the sustainability conversation after a large wave of corporate ESG commitments from (bio)pharmaceutical companies in the past several years. However, these questions are easier to ask than to answer – unless the value chain starts to provide increased environmental transparency, and fast.
Key environmental data that need to be calculated and shared in the pharmaceutical industry are product carbon footprints (PCFs), which measure the greenhouse gas emissions associated with a product along its life cycle in kg CO2 equivalents per kg product. BASF has been calculating PCFs for individual products since 2007 but has more recently developed a proprietary digital solution to efficiently calculate cradle-to-gate PCFs for approximately 45,000 sales products in complex chemical value chains based on high-quality emissions data. The PCF calculations follow general standards for life cycle assessment (ISO 14044) and carbon footprints of products (ISO 14067), as well as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Product Standard.1
The Power of Product Carbon Footprints (PCFs)
In addition to providing insights into a company’s own CO2 hotspots, PCFs are also becoming a key metric to baseline and track CO2 reductions – bridging the conceptual divide between corporate ESG initiatives and aspirations of net-zero medicines.
Amongst the many use cases of PCFs in the pharma value chain, one of the most powerful is in the “eco-design” of drug products early in the development process, by the end of which more than 80% of the environmental impact of the final drug product will have already been determined.2 PCFs enable a quantitative assessment of the environmental impact of potential drug production processes and formulations while balancing other product requirements such as cost, technical specifications, safety, and shelf life.
But what about medicines already on the market? How do we reduce the environmental impact of drugs, currently on pharmacy shelves, which can’t easily be redesigned? This is where PCFs, and industry benchmarking in particular, also play a crucial role.
For several products in the BASF Pharma Solutions portfolio, an industry benchmark - the market average PCF – has been calculated by life-cycle assessment and technology experts and validated by EcovaMed, a third-party consultancy that focuses on life-cycle and carbon footprint assessments for the health sector. For BASF, industry benchmark PCFs provide a valuable reference to assess the progress of CO2 reduction initiatives. For companies downstream in the value chain, these industry benchmark PCFs can inform procurement decisions that affect the environmental impact of medicines already on the market.
As seen in Figures 1 and 2, the PCFs of BASF ibuprofen and Kollidon® 30 (povidone) were assessed compared to the industry benchmark and were found to be at least 30% below the market average PCF.3 Both results were independently validated by EcovaMed. While the results appear simple, the efforts behind the scenes to achieve them were not.
For ibuprofen, the PCF advantage is a result of the highly efficient production process at the Bishop, Texas, plant, that uses several Principles of Green Chemistry (prevention of waste, atom economy, minimization of solvents, energy efficiency, reduction of derivatives, and catalysis), won the U.S. Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge4, and uses four production steps rather than the 5–7 steps that are more common among other ibuprofen suppliers. Furthermore, the Bishop site is committed to continuous optimizations and carbon reduction initiatives, with achievements in steam and flare management programs, catalyst recovery projects, and green electricity purchases.5
For Kollidon® 30 (povidone), the PCF advantage can be attributed to BASF’s unique “Verbund” concept, in which the driving principle is to add value through the efficient use of resources.6 At the large BASF Verbund sites, production plants, energy and material flows, logistics, and site infrastructure are all integrated. In the Verbund system, chemical processes make use of energy more efficiently, achieve higher product yields, and conserve resources. For example, by-products of one process are often used as starting materials for other processes. This creates opportunities to reduce emissions, waste, and resource consumption, often resulting in a carbon footprint advantage on a product level.
The Power of Product Carbon Footprints (PCFs)
At BASF, we continue to examine how we can reduce our emissions and achieve our 2050 Net Zero target. PCFs will remain a key instrument in this effort and have already shaped numerous strategic and investment decisions. PCFs are also the nucleus of BASF’s Supplier CO2 Management Program, in which supplier-specific data for purchased raw materials will replace average data to further enhance BASF PCF accuracy.
With PCFs offering unparalleled transparency into value chain emissions, new opportunities will be unlocked for companies to collaborate and develop innovative solutions to the pharma industry’s sustainability challenges. Will we be able to calculate the carbon footprint of drug products? Can we provide patients with carbon-neutral medicines? The only way to find out is to roll up our sleeves and dive deep into the data.
1ISO 14040:2006 and 14044:2006 for life cycle assessment. Aligned with ISO/TS 14067:2018 for carbon footprint of products and with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Product Standard [WRI & WBCSD, 2011]. Methodology certified by TÜV Rheinland.
2European Commission, 2014
3Cradle-to-gate product carbon footprint; data sources: BASF own estimations, bill of materials and energies from BASF technology and business intelligence; industry average weighted based on nameplate capacities
4US Environmental Protection Agency, “Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge: 1997 Greener Synthetic Pathways Award,” (2022). Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge: 1997 Greener Synthetic Pathways Award | US EPA
5Via Renewable Energy Credits
6https://www.basf.com/global/en/investors/calendar-and-publications/factbook/basf-group/verbund.html
Originally published by the Drug, chemical & Assiciated Technologies Association (DCAT): DCAT Sustainability Leaders - DCAT Value Chain Insights (dcatvci.org)
