Product sustainability
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What is Product sustainability at AstraZeneca?
Follow processes throughout the life cycle of our products with the aim of understanding and addressing their environmental impact; from discovery through development and production, to launch of a new product and to end of product life.
Our approach
To deliver medicines that improve patient outcomes and minimise the burden on the planet, we evaluate and aim to address the environmental impact of materials and processes across the entire product value chain.
We have implemented an internal Product Sustainability Index (PSI) to understand the environmental impacts of our products and inform improvement plans. We also lead our industry in the management of Pharmaceuticals in the Environment (PIE) striving to address critical scientific knowledge gaps and promote responsible product stewardship.
Sustainable decision-making and environmental improvements are embedded across the product life cycle:
Integrated business processes to ensure safety, health and environmental aspects are considered throughout drug development, with guidance on environmental assessment of active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) manufacturing, formulation, packaging and devices
Targets for API manufacturing emissions from both AstraZeneca and our external supply sites
We conduct, fund and support research on the environmental impact of our products and apply the principles of green chemistry in our business
Our life cycle assessment (LCA) programme determines the type and magnitude of environmental impacts across our product value chains and is in line with ISO standards 14040 and 14044
In 2022 we completed our first LCA studies within the Rare Disease Therapy Area, as part of the integration of Alexion into our Product Sustainability programmes
In 2021, we were the first company to launch an Ecopharmacovigilance (EPV) dashboard. This shares data on the relative risks of APIs where traces have been detected in the environment as an unintended, but inevitable, consequence of patients using our life-changing medicines. The data are made transparent in the Environmental Risk Assessment documents on our website
As part of our commitment to drive thought leadership and innovation to manage Pharmaceuticals in the Environment, we lead the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) PREMIER project, a public-private partnership between the European Commission and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA). One aim is to develop tools to identify potential environmental risks of APIs earlier in drug development and make these tools and data more accessible to all stakeholders.