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Healthcare Industry Cannot Ignore Environmental Impact

Recycling or reusing medical devices? It’s coming. A presentation at Pharmapack highlighted green guides and carbon footprint opportunities.

Gregor Anderson, Managing Director at Pharmacentric Solutions at February’s Pharmapack Europe.
Gregor Anderson, Managing Director at Pharmacentric Solutions at February’s Pharmapack Europe.

“Historically, we have been an industry that’s tended to shy away from [sustainability]. It’s driven me to get much more interested and involved in this,” said Gregor Anderson, Managing Director at Pharmacentric Solutions at February’s Pharmapack Europe.

Right now, fast moving consumer goods (FMCGs), particularly foods, are under the spotlight. But the healthcare industry can expect more scrutiny in the coming years.

Where is the drive coming from in healthcare? Anderson says it’s a mix of internal factors such as corporate social responsibility reporting as well as external factors:

  • Healthcare strategies that seek to reduce carbon footprint, like Aarhus Hospital’s initiative
  • Regulatory requirements (e.g. EU packaging reporting and taxation)
  • Retailer packaging reporting requirements, such as those from Walmart and Tesco
  • Increased demand in benchmarking and performing life cycle analyses (LCAs)
  • Consumer expectations and subsequent competitor strategies
  • “Red face” test, showing that you’ve optimized your design and used the least materials possible

Consumers are certainly more educated on environmental impacts than in years past. Anderson noted that in his time at GSK, patients made this known, with one saying that they felt guilty throwing the product away each month.

“We have to work as an industry-wide consortium on this. The medicine is king but if we can work together and identify materials and processes that do have CObenefits, we could make a big difference,” Anderson noted. “We’ve never accounted for actual COsavings. You save money when you save CO2, either by enhanced process or materials.”

Positive impacts can come from unlikely sources. A logistics company scraped barnacles off their boats, making the vessels more efficient and using less fuel. Seemingly little things can add up.

Anderson described a sustainability spectrum that companies fall on, ranging from reactive to mature. On the initial reactive side, companies are doing what they can to “stay legal,” progressing through stages until they are differentiating their products and businesses, building trust and ultimately changing the marketplace.

Opportunity: metered dose inhalers

Anderson discussed the major opportunity that healthcare product manufacturers have to make an impact. Take the inhaler market. It’s projected to be worth $43 billion by 2025, with the market split between metered dose inhalers (MDI) at 60%, dry powder inhalers (DPI) at 30% and smart mist inhalers/nebulizers at 10%. Globally, volumes of single-use doses and multi-dose devices globally are in the billions (with billions of associated packaging units)… and that’s just for respiratory products.

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