Circular economy and innovation solve pharma waste

The circular economy is at the heart of Novo Nordisk’s approach to pharmaceutical waste. Novo Nordisk is a global healthcare company headquarted in Denmark, and a leader in diabetes care. The company’s new environmental strategy, Circular for Zero, sets a new direction for the organization as it transitions from a linear economy of “take-make-dispose” to a circular economy based on three principles: Design out waste and pollution, keep products and materials in use, and regenerate natural systems. The company’s ambition is to have zero environmental impact and to reach a point where it is producing zero landfill, water, energy and material waste. Today 77% of Novo Nordisk’s power comes from renewable sources and it expects to reach 100% by 2020.

For Novo Nordisk’s production of biological medicines, “yeast by far represents the largest amount of waste, and for this we have a very good setup,” says Dorethe Nielsen, Senior Director of Corporate Environmental Strategy at Novo Nordisk. “We convert the yeast into biogas so that all our waste from the fermentation process goes into our biogas plant and is converted into biogas. Anything left after being converted to biogas is used as fertilizer on farmland as there are a lot of nutrients left. Our process is a closed loop, you could say.”

In 2018, 94% of the total waste from Novo Nordisk’s manufacturing was recycled, used for biogas production or incinerated at plants where the energy is used for heat and power production. Just 1% ended up in landfill.

Novo Nordisk’s biogas plant is located near its insulin plant in Kalundborg, Denmark. It is one of many initiatives in the Kalundborg Industrial Symbiosis, a partnership between nine public and private companies in Kalundborg, where the residual product of one enterprise is used as a resource by another enterprise.

“We also focus on recycling,” Nielsen says. “We use a lot of ethanol in our production, so we make sure to reuse it many, many times. We have a regeneration plant for ethanol at our manufacturing facility. “

Applying innovation

Some pharmaceutical companies are looking at green chemistry solutions which use resources efficiently, eliminate use of inherently toxic ingredients and chemical combinations, eliminate waste and hazardous by-products, and minimize use of energy throughout a product’s entire life cycle.

Several companies have invested in a project under the EU’s Innovative Medicines Initiative to develop tools to screen environmental properties earlier in drug development. The increasing importance of biologic drugs, which break down more readily, will also help.

But given the complexity of the challenge, the constant stream of new drugs on the market and the growing demand for pharmaceuticals, it will be a long time before the problem of pharmaceuticals in the environment can be considered under control.