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• Caring for the environment

Caring for the environment

Caring for the environment is a key element of our approach to Corporate Responsibility at GSK. Our Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) Plan for Excellence sets out a strategy to improve our performance over the ten-year period to 2010, from a 2001 baseline. This includes interim targets to be reached by the end of 2005.

We are on track to meet seven of our ten targets. These cover some of our most important environmental issues, including energy and water consumption, ozone depleting potential, global warming potential, wastewater quality, volatile organic compound emissions and non-hazardous waste. We may not achieve the three targets on hazardous waste, recycling and ozone depletion potential of ancillary equipment by the end of 2005. A fuller explanation of our performance is provided on the relevant pages of this report. Next year we will set new targets for 2010.

About the environment section of this report
This is the 5th year that we have reported on our environmental performance. The legacy companies (Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham) individually published EHS reports for a number of years prior to the formation of GSK in 2000. Copies of these reports are available on the Corporate Register website.

In previous years, we have published a separate EHS report alongside our Corporate Responsibility Report, but this year we have fully integrated the two.

Further background information on our approach to managing environmental issues is available in the Environment, health and safety section of our website. There are also more details about our corporate responsibility reporting in the section about this report.

Scope of data
The environmental data covers the calendar year 2004. It is collected from 83 of our 84 pharmaceutical and consumer manufacturing sites, 4 of our 8 biologicals manufacturing sites and 20 of 24 R&D sites as well as 5 of 6 distribution centres, 4 of the 6 major office locations and 6 of the smaller office and sales locations. We include data for sites that were in operation for all or part of the year.

We plan to collect energy, water and waste data from our smaller offices, sales and distribution centres in a phased approach over the next few years. However, the overall environmental impact from these sites is relatively small and we therefore do not plan to collect other environmental data.

Notes attached to the charts explain the scope and data collection process for each parameter in more detail.

Verification
The environment, health and safety sections of this report are externally verified by ERM (Environmental Resources Management). See ERM’s verification statement.

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