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Progress towards targets

Our EHS Plan for Excellence initially set out a strategy to improve our performance over the ten-year period to 2010, starting from a 2001 baseline. The Plan identified targets in 10 areas, with interim targets for 2005 – halfway through the plan period. So we can now review progress over the five years, as well as beginning work to extend the Plan for a further five years to 2015.

The chart summarises our progress since 2001 and in comparison to our targets (per unit of sales).

We have achieved six targets and missed four.

Targets achieved

• Energy use
• Global warming potential from energy use
• Ozone depletion potential from production of inhalers
• Water consumption
• Wastewater quality measured by chemical oxygen demand
• Non-hazardous waste disposed

Target nearly achieved

• Volatile organic compounds emitted to air

Targets not achieved

• Ozone depletion potential from ancillary equipment
• Hazardous waste disposed
• Waste recycled

Our performance has been affected by significant business changes such as outsourcing, which has reduced our water consumption and improved wastewater quality. In other cases, such as solvent recovery, product transfers and new product introductions have made it more difficult to achieve targets.

We met the targets for energy consumed and the associated global warming potential. This is largely due to significant improvements in energy savings in our primary manufacturing plants, while Research and Development used more energy due to increased activity.

We missed targets for recycling and for disposal of hazardous waste (four-fifths of which is solvent). Performance was affected by a complex mixture of factors. On the one hand:

• Phase-out of some older products over the years (some with more steps) contributed to a reduction in solvent waste;
• New products being made tend to have fewer manufacturing steps than old products, which means less solvent and energy is used
• Some sites modified their equipment to recycle solvents that had been received when processes were moved from other facilities in previous years

However

• New products mean our pilot plants are running more and manufacturing plants will take some time to adjust solvent recycling operations to new solvents
• It will take some time to adjust solvent recovery operations to the new products
• And in one case a site needed to refurbish its solvent recovery equipment and so had to dispose of solvent that would ordinarily be recovered and reused

The plan for the next 10 years, with interim targets for 2010, is now under construction. It will be aligned with the GSK business drivers and will state aspirations to move towards environmental sustainability.

We have consulted internally and externally on the Plan to ensure that it is reasonable and reflects measures which drive positive practices in the businesses and align with stakeholders’ expectations. The extensive consultation means that the full plan will not be ready for publication until at least mid-2006.

Full details of performance are shown in each section of this report.

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