![]() By 2030 suppliers will only qualify for NHS contracts if they can demonstrate progress through carbon emissions reporting in line with the supplier framework.Ĭonsumer and patient behaviour can also help to drive the decarbonisation of medicines. By April 2024, all new NHS suppliers will need to publish a carbon reduction plan for direct emissions. Voluntary product standards will potentially be introduced by 2025.TheNHS is the world’s first health service to commit to reaching net zero carbon emissions, and will launch the NHS sustainable supplier framework next year. The UK industrial decarbonisation strategy similarly identified the need for data transparency and data standards, with a call for evidence on low carbon industrial products to be conducted in the next 12 months. Measuring only the impacts of pharmaceutical companies would be misleading we need an industry-standard method for tracking and accounting for embodied emissions across supply chains. Alone, these make up nearly a third of UK pharmaceutical emissions and highlight the cross-sectorial and global challenge with carbon accounting. Notably, the most carbon-significant materials identified were petrochemicals (10%), agricultural products (9%), basic iron and steel (6%) and industrial gasses (5%). It can be difficult to get accurate carbon reporting from suppliers, with attempts often further complicated by confidentiality concerns.Īn environmentally extended input-output analysis conducted by Small World Consulting modelled the source of the UK pharmaceutical sector greenhouse gas footprint, and the industries in which they are generated. However, the complexity of medicine supply chains poses specific challenges in acquiring and reporting information about the environmental impacts. The first steps towards net zero include establishing targets (such as the Science Based Targets initiative’s Net-Zero Standard) and understanding and quantifying the emissions across the supply chain. To comply with the Paris Agreement’s target to limit global average temperature to 1.5☌ above pre-industrial temperatures, the pharmaceutical industry would need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 59% by 2025. For companies that do not produce high emission products (eg inhalers) at point-of-use, the material extraction and processing comprise an even greater proportion of pharmaceutical carbon footprint (~78%) Within the pharmaceutical industry, typically the majority of emissions comes from the supply chain (raw materials and their processing). Emissions mappingĮnd-to-end CO 2 mapping of the medicines manufacturing process showing the proportion of CO 2 emissions at each stage In the UK, the pharmaceutical carbon footprint makes up about 22% of National Health Service (NHS) emissions, equating to 1% of the UK’s overall total. Products such as inhalers or those that use hot water to dissolve medication have very large carbon footprints (inhalers account for about 30% of GlaxoSmithKline’s emissions). Surprisingly, pharma is 13% more polluting than the automotive industry despite being 28% smaller. The pharmaceutical industry produces an estimated equivalent of 52 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in greenhouse gas emissions every year, accounting for around 2% of industrial greenhouse gas emissions. For example, AstraZeneca’s Ambition Zero Carbon strategy, which aims to be carbon negative across the entire value chain by 2030. Encouragingly, the majority of big pharma companies now have ambitious net zero targets, strategies and initiatives in place. However, the pharmaceutical industry also has a role to play. Energy, automotive and foundation industries (those producing raw materials such as metals, chemicals and cement) are typically under the most scrutiny. In the wake of Cop26, fresh new pledges to achieve net zero have come thick and fast.
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