• Home
• Responsibility
• CR Review 2007
• Environment

Environment

What is GSK doing to address climate change?

Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges the world faces. GSK wants to be part of the solution and we have launched a new programme to reduce our energy use and climate impact.

What we are doing

As well as benefiting the environment, taking action on climate change makes good business sense. It helps us cut costs, improve our reputation with stakeholders and prepare for future legislation on emissions.

Our footprint
In 2007, our carbon footprint was equivalent to 6.9 million tonnes of CO₂ compared to 6.8 million in 2006. The majority of our emissions come from the use of inhalers by patients with respiratory disease (see pie chart), and in 2007 the use of these medically important devices increased, with emissions from inhalers increasing from 4.3 million tonnes of CO₂ to 4.5 million tonnes.

Climate change impact by source

² Includes climate change impact from greenhouse gases released: from cooling systems, during the production of inhaler products, from wastewater treatment and other processes.

If we exclude the use of inhalers, our carbon footprint reduced from 2.5 million tonnes of CO₂ in 2006 to 2.4 million tonnes in 2007, reflecting energy efficiency progress across the business.

Our climate change impact targets are for operations energy and transport, and are normalised by sales based on a constant exchange rate. In 2007 these emissions decreased by 1.6 per cent from 87.3 to 85.9 tonnes of CO₂ per £ million sales.

GSK’s climate programme for operational energy
Building on the success of our 2001 to 2005 programme to reduce energy use and related climate change impact, we launched a revised programme in 2007 to reduce our carbon footprint. This commits us to new targets to reduce our energy use and the climate impact of our operations and transport, normalised by sales.

We will achieve these targets by making our buildings and equipment more energy efficient and buying electricity produced from renewable sources; installing onsite renewable technologies such as wind turbines and photovoltaic panels; and reducing the climate impact of travel and transport by switching from air to sea freight and by transporting more per load to reduce the number of journeys needed.

Our Board has approved a central fund to finance energy saving projects across GSK.

Impacts from inhaler products
Only two per cent of our inhalers now contain chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) as propellants and we have committed to a complete phase out by the end of 2010. About 60 per cent of our inhalers contain hydrofluoroalkanes (HFAs) which have a lower climate change impact and we are still exploring ways to reduce the amount of HFAs released from these inhalers. Over one-third of our inhalers are now dry powder inhalers with no propellant and therefore no climate change impact during use.

Q. How can the pharmaceutical manufacturing process be made more efficient?  

A. Making medicines is highly regulated and is complicated due to the number of process steps required. We know that there is more we need to do in this area and we have set a target to double the average materials efficiency of manufacturing processes for new products introduced between 2006 and 2010.

Q. Are pharmaceutical residues present in drinking water and are they a risk to humans?

A. Our studies have shown that GSK pharmaceutical products are either not present in watercourses, or are present at low concentrations. Our risk assessments demonstrate that these concentrations do not pose a risk to human health. But we are not complacent and we continually monitor the latest scientific studies and findings to improve our risk assessment methodology.

Back to top