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Designing products for environmental sustainability
GSK aspires to be a sustainable company and recognises that
moving from aspiration to reality may take years. Initially we will
work toward enhancing our environmental sustainability while delivering
new products faster and better. We have launched an eco-design toolkit
that is primarily for new product development, but may also be of
help for product transfer or redesign of processes.
The toolkit will help GSK bring products to market faster because
the eco-design principles and practices will guide scientists and
engineers to design-out potential problems early in development.
It will help us bring products to market more cost effectively because
eco-design principles and practices will enable GSK to use less
material and energy to make our products. It enables R&D to
address potential environment, safety and health issues before a
process is handed over to manufacturing where the cost to address
EHS issues is considerably higher.
The toolkit is currently composed of several modules. Each of these
modules considers the EHS impacts of materials, processes and services
from the time raw materials are extracted through to the ultimate
fate of products and wastes in the environment. The modules currently
available include the following:
Green Chemistry Guide - offers guidance
to GSK scientists and engineers on applying Green Chemistry concepts
to enable more efficient use of resources, reduce environment, health
and safety impacts and minimise costs. It includes:
- A ranking and summary of the most used chemistries and 'best-in-class'
examples from well developed GSK processes.
- A ranking and review of issues encountered during process design
and development.
- A ranking and summary of common technology alternatives for
chemical processing.
- Guidance on materials, process alternatives, synthetic route
strategies and metrics for evaluating chemistries, technologies
and processes.
Materials Guides
Solvent Selection - contains information on alternative solvents
and solvents that should be avoided. It:
- Compares and ranks 45 solvents according to environmental waste
profile, environmental impact, safety profile and health impact.
- Compares International Conference on Harmonisation (ICH) guidelines
on allowable concentrations of solvents in active pharmaceutical
ingredients against EHS characteristics of solvents.
- Provides information on boiling point and azeotrope formation
to assist in the selection of separable co-solvents.
- Provides detailed information on physical properties, safety,
health and environmental issues.
Base Selection - ranks 42 chemical bases according to their
environmental waste profile, environmental impact, safety profile
and health impact. It also provides detailed information on each
base.
Green Packaging Guide - provides a life cycle assessment
tool, guidance and a business process for selection of packaging
for the Pharmaceuticals and Consumer Healthcare businesses.
In 2002, we completed a new component of the eco-design toolkit
called FLASC (Fast Lifecycle Assessment for Synthetic Chemistry).
FLASC is a web-based application that allows bench chemists
to perform a "life cycle" evaluation of the environmental
consequences of new or existing processes based upon the input materials
used. It quantifies the energy and materials used in product manufacture,
as well as emissions released and potential environmental impacts.
FLASC will:
- Facilitate the comparison or benchmark of process routes and
allow chemists and managers to rapidly identify the greenest option.
- Identify the materials that have the biggest impacts and provide
guidance on how to reduce those impacts.
- Quantify the energy and materials used in product manufacture,
the emissions released, and potential environmental impacts.
FLASC is a process and tool that will enable an assessment
of eight different environmental impact categories associated with
materials used in a synthetic route or manufacturing process:
- Mass of materials used
- Energy required
- Photochemical Ozone Creation Potential (POCP)
- Greenhouse gas equivalents
- Acidification
- Eutrophication
- Total organic carbon generated before any waste treatments
- Oil and natural gas depletion for raw materials manufacture
FLASC uses a scoring system that enables a quick identification
of areas for improvement, facilitates comparison of processes and
serves as a tracking system for synthetic route or manufacturing
process improvement throughout GSK.
Our second web-based application developed this year is the WRAP
(Weighed Resources for Assessment of Packaging) Tool. With WRAP
packaging development managers can determine if pack modification
or new designs offer environmental improvement when compared with
benchmarks of existing packs. The benchmarks use packaging profiles
from over 200 individual packs and are also related to product type.
They consist of a number of metrics that cover the product life
cycle. The metrics are:
- Manufacture of packaging
- Mass of packaging
- Biodegradability
- PVC content
- Resource depletion
Using a scoring mechanism, WRAP generates a colour-coded
report that clearly shows if the pack is better or worse than the
appropriate benchmark. The developer may then interactively investigate
other pack options to find where improvements can be made and what
is currently the best GSK example of packaging for that type of
product. Scenario analysis is also possible so the developer can
change elements of the pack profile and quickly see the effect on
the score. The benchmarks will be updated and expanded as more data
on packaging for GSK products are collected.
An application under development is a materials assessment site
that will assess chemicals common to the pharmaceutical industry,
other than solvents and bases. In the longer term, we envision an
increasing number and variety of applications that will apply not
only to R&D and manufacturing, but to commercial operations
as well. We envision applications that move from merely providing
information to providing expert knowledge.
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