Achieving Environmental Sustainability In Bioprocessing

Advancing environmental sustainability in bioprocessing is an important and necessary step in achieving the pharmaceutical industry’s goal of improving global health. In partnering with biopharma and contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMOs), suppliers have a vital role in supporting sustainability goals.

The science behind the global climate environmental crisis is clear: climate change, ocean plastics, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, water scarcity, and waste effect have converged to create unprecedented global challenges for our ecosystem. Achieving sustainability goals has therefore become a key metric for companies in many leading sectors. In bioprocessing, this means working to understand and minimize the environmental impact of products and their packaging throughout a product’s life cycle—from conception and early design to end of life.

The pharmaceutical and bioprocessing industries have begun engaging in more concerted efforts to adopt sustainable practices to support their corporate sustainability goals, processes, and overall efficiencies. This push is crucial, as the complex operations and supply chains that typify the industry at large, coupled with the hurdles and costs that accompany new technology integration, can make reaching an organization’s sustainability goals challenging. In a recent webinar, experts from Thermo Fisher Scientific, a global supplier of bioprocessing equipment and consumables, explored how to support pharma and biotech in achieving their sustainability goals through product innovation, particularly around single-use technologies (SUTs).