“If our suppliers fail, we’ll fail, and if they succeed, we’ll succeed.” That’s how José Francisco Vallejo Cabrera of Sanofi describes big pharma’s relationship with its suppliers on sustainability, and it was a message repeated in every conversation at the CPHI Milan 2026 Sustainability Summit.
PharmaSource spoke to five sustainability leaders on the show floor. José Francisco Vallejo Cabrera, Global Head of Environment and Environmental Sustainability at Sanofi, has more than 25 years in sustainability, spanning environmental certification, energy management, health and safety, and human rights. He was joined by Marc Roodhuyzen de Vries, Cofounder and CEO of sustainability consultancy Nexio Projects, and his colleague Rachit Paliwal, lead ESG consultant. The other guests were James Swinyard, senior director of investments and partnerships at the nonprofit My Green Lab; Hywel Woolf, Global Sustainability Manager at Sharp Services; and Simon Hodgson, Industry and Technology Sector Lead for Europe at SLR, which provides the secretariat for the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Initiative (PSCI).
In the latest PharmaSource podcast episode, they explain why pharma supply chain sustainability is moving from targets to delivery. They also cover what buyers and suppliers each need to change to get there.
The Commitment Phase Is Over
The first wave of supplier sustainability work was about commitments. Pharma companies, many coordinating through PSCI, asked their suppliers to set science-based targets. James says that job is largely done.
“We’ve really moved from commitment, where you saw from PSCI an ask of all of their suppliers. Many pharmaceutical companies signed on to ask all their suppliers to set targets and have SBTi validate them. Most of the suppliers have done this. So it’s moving from commitment and validation of commitments to action now.”
José agrees that expectations are now clear, and that what pharma wants next is execution. He’s also clear that buyers aren’t looking for perfection: “We are not expecting that everything is going perfectly, but we are here. They need to understand that we are here to support them and to collaborate.”
For suppliers still early in the process, José sets out a clear order of priorities: commit to an SBTi net zero target, define a transition plan, then build it into how the business already runs.
“There is nothing that can be run in parallel. We need to find a way to integrate into the existing governance… So governance for me is one of the first priorities.”
The pressure is real. Simon notes that “the pioneers in the industry have set 2030 reduction targets,” and some have set “aggressive 40, 50, 60% reduction targets in their Scope 3 emissions.” Asked whether the industry is on track, his answer is blunt: “Probably not on the whole. Some individual companies are.” He also warns that “AI, cold chain, they’re all driving us in the wrong direction. They’re driving up footprints.”
Focus on Quality Over Quantity
The EU’s Omnibus simplification package has narrowed the scope of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), taking many companies out of mandatory reporting. Rachit warns against reading that as a reprieve. Outside Europe, he says, adoption of ISSB standards is growing across “like 40 different jurisdictions.” And customer requests keep arriving wherever a company sits in the value chain.
“It shouldn’t be considered as if they’re off the hook because sooner or later, no matter where you sit in the value chain, the regulation is going to reach you. Whether you’re a supplier to a big company or a company that is expanding, which might come in scope further down.”
Pharma starts from a stronger position than most sectors. Rachit notes that healthcare contributes 4.4% of global GHG emissions, most of it Scope 3. He adds that the sector had the most companies with SBTi targets in 2025. His advice to pharma companies and their suppliers is to make their existing data more reliable rather than to collect more of it.
“The main thing that they should focus on is quality of data rather than quantity of data, which is also what we’re seeing with regulations being narrowed down in scope. It’s important to move away from estimates to primary supplier data, getting more product carbon footprints, and making sure that third-party auditors validate the data that they have and report.”
In his words: “The data needs to be trusted. It’s not that companies need 10X more data points to report.”
Standardization Is Finally Arriving
For suppliers, the biggest frustration has been getting the same question from every customer, worded slightly differently each time. Hywel says that “over the last few years we have been asked the same question slightly differently on multiple occasions, which detracts from actually doing the doing.” His takeaway from CPHI was encouraging: customers and the groups that represent them are “fundamentally moving towards one ask.”
Some of that harmonization is happening at product level. José describes the industry’s LCA Consortium, which SLR helps run, and the launch of PAS 2090 as the first industry standard for product-level environmental footprints.
“We are establishing the LCA Consortium to harmonize methodologies and develop a common standard that enables companies across the industry to measure and communicate the environmental footprint of their products. This harmonization is an opportunity for us to speak the same language, reduce the reporting burden, and focus on what really matters: identifying environmental hotspots and taking meaningful action rather than simply reporting.”
At supplier level, Simon explains how PSCI members now share audits instead of duplicating them.
“PSCI is all of these companies together agreeing on a standard approach for the supply chain… When they come and do a sustainability audit of the site, they’re all using the same framework. What that means is if GSK does an audit of a supplier, they can make that audit available with the supplier’s permission to Boehringer Ingelheim or to Abbott or to AstraZeneca. So they’re sharing audits.”
Rebalance the Buyer–Supplier Relationship
Suppliers can only go so far alone. Hywel says Sharp has made strong progress on the Scope 1 and 2 emissions it controls. But in its largest Scope 3 category, purchased goods and services, the decisions mostly sit with its clients.
“Around about 80% of that resides with our clients, so without them selecting and instructing us to move to more sustainable materials and more sustainable suppliers, it’s difficult for us to move the needle for Scope 3.”
Simon argues that the way buyers assess sustainability in tenders doesn’t yet reward suppliers who invest. Buyers typically give sustainability credentials a small share of the marks.
“They might give you 10% of the marks for your sustainability data. There are a number of challenges. Firstly, they’re not doing it in a consistent way, so they’re all asking different questions. Secondly, is 10% enough? Suppliers are reporting to us that they’re very sustainable, they think they’re much better than their competitors, but they’re still losing the job on price.”
He calls it “a very power-imbalanced model. It’s the buyer dictating to the supplier.” The fix he describes is to build suppliers’ capacity to offer solutions proactively, to train buyers “so that they know a good thing when they see it,” and to make decisions on “a wider financial consideration than just the lowest price,” including total cost of ownership and life cycle.
Hywel, who shared the stage at CPHI with AstraZeneca senior procurement director Rob Williams, says the answer is deeper partnership, earlier in the relationship.
“Deep-rooted partnership is what’s needed to really move the needle from now on. And that means early engagement with suppliers, talking about commercial elements upfront, openly, transparently, just to unlock future savings and unlock future potential when it comes to being inherently more sustainable.”
James makes the same point about timing: “We need to start integrating sustainability and sustainability teams into discussions at contracting.”
The Business Case Is ROI and Resilience
Every guest argued that sustainability is good business, not an extra cost. James, who has a finance background, points to the returns from My Green Lab certification. The program has certified more than 5,400 laboratories in 63 countries.
“Sustainability programs, when done right and done to a common framework and standard and a proven process, can save money and resources… On average, specifically the lab certification program, can return five times investment in one year alone.”
Many of those savings come from simple changes in behavior. Fume hoods are one example: “You can save up to 30% just by closing the sash when you’re not using it.” Capital projects pay back too. Hywel says Sharp’s new solar installation at its UK site in South Wales has “saved us a lot of money in the four months it’s been installed, but there’s also obvious sustainability benefits.”
José makes a wider case: sustainability builds resilience into the portfolio itself.
“Sustainability is enabling us to optimize resources. Not only the resources that we have today, probably the resources that we not have tomorrow. So it’s a question of preparing our portfolio, preparing our product as well. A kind of resilience. Being able to anticipate the nature dependencies, carbon taxes, regulation on plastics.”
He points to cold chain design as an example of where sustainability and supply security overlap. Products designed early in development to depend less on the cold chain mean “less cold chain, less energy, better environmental footprint, better for resilience.”
For anyone wondering where to start, the guests offered practical first steps. James’s advice to suppliers is “just start now. Regardless of your maturity level, start implementing practical things and engaging your scientists.” Simon suggests starting with the PSCI website, which has “a whole bunch of free information there, free tools.”
