Earlier this month the world’s largest drugmaker said it had cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent in four years by implementing various conservation measures, ranging from the use of a biomass burner at its plant in Freiberg, Germany to the installation of solar panels its facility in Groton, Connecticut.
Spokeswoman Grace Ann Arnold told Outsourcing-pharma.com that: “Since 2007, Pfizer has completed more than 1,500 energy conservation and utility projects designed to improve efficiency and promote environmental sustainability.
“These efforts involved the implementation of energy efficient technologies, the use of renewable technologies, and implementing manufacturing improvements that allowed us to reduce the energy consumed.”
Arnold also told us that while outsourced R&D and manufacturing had not helped Pfizer reduce emissions, the firm is keen to encourage the contractors it works with to conduct energy efficient and sustainable operations.
“As a part of Pfizer's Environmental Sustainability Program, there is a platform function responsible for driving sustainability and energy savings across our value chain,” she said, adding that the firm quizzed its top 130 suppliers on energy use and emmissions earlier this year.
“This survey is intended to encourage our supply chain to join us on our Green Journey, using the responses to help establish a baseline and develop supplier targets. The results are currently being tallied and under review.
“We hope to share these results more broadly with our suppliers, enabling Pfizer to partner with them to drive efficiencies and energy conservation throughout our global external supply network. “
We asked if a contractor's green credentials would ever be the deciding factor in winning a supply contract and Arnold told us that: "Pfizer recently updated the company’s procurement procedures to include information related to the sustainability measures taken by the company’s top suppliers.
"Pfizer will consider sustainability measures in its overall evaluation process for key suppliers; “greener” suppliers will have an advantage when all other criteria are equal."