The pharma industry has defined ambitious decarbonisation targets of 70-90% to be achieved by the year 2030. How realistic are they without real change?
“No pain, no gain,” says Dragana Cvijanovic, Business Director, Processability & Sustainability for BD (Beckton Dickinson), speaking to the PharmaSource Podcast.
“Let’s be very clear: it is feasible, technically, to deliver this by 2030, but we are already late. It’s a very short timeframe to divide your carbon footprint by four”.
“The biggest challenge is that the vast majority of the carbon footprint, probably ranging between 50 to 70%, comes from suppliers,” says Dragana “and when it comes to making any major change to suppliers or materials, in pharma industry it usually takes three years on average.”
As a key supplier to pharmaceutical industry, BD has a significant role to play in helping customers reach their targets.
“BD is a company committed to environmental standards” says Dragana. “We follow the guidelines of Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), having submitted our numbers and verification for full validation to science based targets.”
“We have created a central structure to help businesses identify sources of low carbon materials and are also accelerating investments in green energy.”
However, Dragana points out that the industry “cannot count on green energy as the sole source of easy decarbonisation. The industry will need to accept a cost increase, because the cost of green energy is today higher than brown energy.”
No pain, no gain
“The targets are extremely aggressive if you don’t want to accept the higher cost, don’t want to degrade your quality or do that without changing your industrial processes.”
“If we can’t change the price, can’t change the process and can’t change the regulatory filing then no, it’s not possible.”
“My son who is 15 would say ‘no pain, no gain’”
Stay ahead of trends and best practices
