Product sustainability

Our approach to product sustainability

We are minimising the environmental footprint of our medicines to contribute to more sustainable healthcare delivery, while ensuring the highest standards of medical efficacy and safety. 

Across the entire product life cycle – from research and development through manufacturing, supply, and delivery to patients we aim to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and avoid impacts on nature from the materials we use and the waste we generate.

We know that the GHG emissions from our product value chains contribute significantly to our Scope 3 emissions. That's why we’re embedding sustainable decision-making, informed by data and science, across the product life cycle to reduce our environmental impact.

We aim to ensure the environmental safety of our products and lead our industry in the management of Pharmaceuticals in the Environment (PIE), promoting responsible product stewardship.

We follow a life cycle approach for product sustainability

Safety, health and environment are considered throughout our medicines development including through:

• Implementing our Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) programme, aligned with ISO 14040 and 14044 standards, which now encompasses medicines contributing to 91% of our Total Revenue.

• Applying green chemistry and engineering principles to our medicines development, as well as connecting our scientists to best practices. 

• Investing in new science and disruptive technologies that reduce environmental impact by enabling the development of shorter chemical sequences to create active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and improve processes for new modality medicines.

• Environmental sustainability assessments of API manufacturing to ensure compliance with chemical regulations and support sustainable process development.

• Redesigning our packaging by adopting more circular approaches.

• Playing an active role in our sector, including through our engagement in the American Chemical Society Green Chemistry Institute Pharmaceutical Roundtable.

• Implementing our internal Product Sustainability Index (PSI) using our LCA's and using our LCA's and other sustainability inputs to understand the environmental impacts of our launched products and inform sustainability improvement plans. By 2025, 79% of our launched products based on sales revenue had been assessed. The PSI programme is also being piloted on development projects, with an initial focus on carbon and supported by a simplified internal LCA tool to enable early identification and assessment of products in development that will be part of our future footprint.

The PSI has scoring criteria across six categories

Product sustainability in action

Reducing Scope 3 GHG emissions from product use:

As part of our efforts to provide patients with access to treatment with lower GHG emissions, we are transitioning our portfolio of inhaled respiratory medicines delivered by pressurised metered dose inhalers (pMDIs) to use a next-generation propellant (NGP) with near-zero global warming potential (GWP). Our NGP has 99.9% lower GWP than propellants used in our current pMDI portfolio, which makes the transition to the NGP a key product-related element of our Ambition Zero Carbon strategy. 

In a world-first, in May 2025, the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency approved our first medicine delivered by pMDI with this near-zero GWP propellant. In early 2026, the UK fully transitioned this medicine to the next-generation propellant. A positive opinion from the European Medicines Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) in July 2025 also paved the way for the transition in Europe, which is underway throughout 2026. We have also submitted regulatory filings for this medicine to be used with the next-generation propellant in China, Japan, the US, and other countries.

API Carbon footprint reduction: For all our medicines, we are innovating to minimise their environmental footprint while upholding the highest standards of efficacy and safety. The development of small-molecule medicines, solvent reduction, reuse, and recycling is helping us to reduce the overall solvent carbon footprint.

Collaborating on a life cycle assessment standard for medicines

In 2025, we contributed to the world's first global standard for pharmaceutical lifecycle assessments: PAS 2090. Developed by the British Standards Institution with NHS England, the Office for Life Sciences, and the Pharmaceutical LCA Consortium, which we chair, this voluntary standard provides a harmonised, science-based framework for measuring environmental impact across the pharmaceutical sector.

PAS 2090 enhances transparency and helps identify where action is needed to reduce the health sector's environmental footprint – from manufacture to supply and end of life – while ensuring patients continue to access life-changing treatments. This standard was developed through extensive collaboration with over 475 stakeholders from 35 countries. 

References

1. Bell, J et al. Greenhouse gas emissions associated with COPD care in the UK: Results from SHERLOCK CARBON. European Respiratory Journal 2021 58(suppl 65): PA3551; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1183/13993003.congress-2021.PA3551 
2. World Health Organization Model List of Essential Medicines – 23rd List, 2023. In: The selection and use of essential medicines 2023: Executive summary of the report of the 24th WHO Expert Committee on the Selection and Use of Essential Medicines, 24 – 28 April 2023. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2023.[Online] Available at :https://www.who.int/groups/expert-committee-on-selection-and-use-of-essential-medicines/essential-medicines-lists [Accessed April 2026].

Veeva ID: Z4-82720
Date of preparation: April 2026