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Corporate Responsibility Report 2008

Environmental sustainability

Sustainability has been defined as meeting the needs of today without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

GSK is embarking on a journey towards sustainability that we expect to continue for many years. As well as benefiting the environment, our sustainability efforts encourage innovation that provides a better outcome for society and help us to reduce costs.

Our early environmental management programmes focused on controlling emissions and wastes from our operations through treatment and disposal systems. Our approach to sustainability is to change the fundamental process to reduce the amount of resource consumed, avoiding waste at source rather than simply treating the waste and emissions that arise. We have already begun changing our business and developing innovative new manufacturing processes.

We have set initial sustainability goals to:

• Double the average efficiency with which we convert raw materials to finished products for new products by the end of 2010 from a 2005 baseline
• Reduce our energy and climate change impact per unit of sales from 2006 levels by 45 per cent by 2015
• Eliminate CFCs in our products and equipment by the end of 2010

Examples of our sustainability initiatives include

• Reducing the amount of material resources we use such as raw materials and fossil fuels
• Minimising waste and recycling unavoidable waste
• Redesigning production processes to eliminate the production of toxic materials
• Reducing energy consumption and the associated carbon emissions

We manage our Environment, Health, Safety and Sustainability (EHSS) programme according to a framework that sets out consistent standards of employee health and safety, environmental protection and sustainability. This framework acts as an internal regulatory system that reflects our understanding of our risks to ensure our operations comply with laws and regulations. It provides information, tools and training to help everyone at GSK meet our standards. It includes targets as set out in the Plan for Excellence to address our fundamental environmental and sustainability impacts. We also work with our suppliers to help them become more sustainable.

Openness and transparency are fundamental to our sustainability performance and we will continue to engage with stakeholders to share views and dilemmas.

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