“As humans, we are part of the environment. We have to recognize that, just by being and consuming we are having a detrimental impact on the environment. It’s all interlinked. It’s all co- dependent.”
This was the stark message delivered by Association of the European Self-Care Industry director general Jurate Švarcaite, speaking on behalf of the Global Self-Care Federation’s environment working group at the 2024 GSCF, Asia Pacific Self-Medication Industry and Thai Self-Medication Industry Association Joint Congress in Bangkok, Thailand.
“Wherever you live in the world, you have seen the floods, you have seen extreme heat, you have seen the consequences of humans consuming without really considering it too much.”
“If we want to keep having the planet which we are living on,” Švarcaite continued, “environmentally sustainable self-care is inevitable. We want to be a responsible industry which delivers effective and safe self-care solutions.”
Shared Urgency
Švarcaite’s sense of urgency was shared by her co-panellists Marco Annas, vice president, global governmental affairs at Bayer Consumer Health, and Emma Valette, ASEA commercial head and sustainability lead at Opella (formerly Sanofi Consumer Healthcare).
“We just learned that for the first time in modern history, average temperatures are already 1.5 degrees higher in the last consecutive 12 months,” Annas noted. “So it’s right to be concerned.” Especially, Annas added, with a “not very encouraging” UN Climate Change Conference taking place at the same time in Baku, Azerbaijan.
“But it fits into the picture in a time where voters in the largest economy of the world decide they should walk away from climate commitments, or a time where a lot of people say, hey, it’s way more important to revive the economy than to protect the foundations of our life.”
Echoing Švarcaite’s link between human and planetary health, Valette pointed to a report published by the World Health Organization in 2023 that claimed that a quarter of diseases could be eliminated if people had access to a healthy environment.
Bringing the discussion back to the local context, Valette noted that Asia is one of the regions most impacted by global warming and pollution. “In Indonesia, for example, about 10,000 people die every year because of plastic waste pollution.”
“It is very important, therefore, that people, especially in Asia, have access to clean water, to good soil, so they can grow healthy food, to clean air and to be protected from the natural disasters that can occur.”
Sustainability Charter
This sense of urgency is also reflected in the climate commitments of major consumer health companies, many of which have signed up to GSCF’s Charter for Environmentally Sustainable Self-Care – the “first industry-wide climate action resolution issued by the consumer health sector” – launched in 2021.
As of now, the pledge has over 25 signatories and counting, including associations such as AESGP and TSMIA and companies including Bayer, Haleon, Opella, Reckitt and Taisho.
The charter focuses on three priority areas where the industry can have the greatest impact and influence: plastics and packaging, pharmaceuticals in the environment and CO2 footprint, Švarcaite explained.
With regards to plastics and packaging, “one of the greatest challenges” the global consumer health industry faces is making medicine blister packs sustainable, Švarcaite noted.
“We are actively seeking, as an industry, to find ways to reduce plastic packaging wherever feasible,” Švarcaite insisted. “However, we also have to recognize that packaging is an integral part of product safety.”
Recycling Tricky
“We cannot simply find easy substitutes” to the polyvinyl chloride (PVC) mixed material blister packs, Švarcaite explained. “Because we also have to be conscious that any substitute, any element of the packaging, can impact the shelf life and therefore the safety of the products.”
The fact that blisters are often made from a combination of PVC and aluminium – the latter providing a safe but easily perforable barrier – also “makes them impossible to recycle in current waste management streams,” Švarcaite noted. “Furthermore, with medicines, there is a risk of the product contaminating the packaging, which makes the packaging, again, very difficult to recycle.”
Bayer has taken a step in the right direction, however, with a “first-of-its-kind” polyethene terephthalate (PET) blister for its Aleve in analgesic brand in the Netherlands, highlighted Annas.
Designed in partnership with pharma packaging specialist Liveo Research, Aleve’s new PET blister reduces the carbon footprint of Aleve packaging by 38%, uses 78% less water and 53% less land – potentially addressing biodiversity loss – and is more easily recyclable as it uses only a single material, eliminating the aluminium foil layer usually found in medicine packaging.
Annas said Bayer is “super excited” about the “breakthrough” in this area, which he agreed poses a “significant challenge” due to the multi-layer composition of blister packs. “We are now looking how to scale this fast and make it a new standard where possible.”
Government Action
Švarcaite agreed that global recycling and circular manufacturing standards and definitions would be “fantastic.” “We also would like to see that where we have extended producer responsibility schemes, that those are well designed.”
“If we get the bill for recycling, we then need to be equal partners in designing how our packaging is actually going to be recycled, because that also helps us to drive the cost down and make sure we manufacture in a way that is efficient and preserves the environment.”
In general, Švarcaite called for governments to invest further in collection and recycling infrastructure, a call that was echoed by Opella’s Valette. “Governments need to ramp up recycling,” Valette insisted. “Because if, as industry, we develop recyclable packaging, we need to make sure that this packaging is then recycled, that it is not still going to go landfill or incineration. This is still an issue.”
However, Švarcaite also cautioned regulators to give medicine manufacturers more time than any other industry to adjust to new rules, “simply because packaging is an integral part of product safety.”
“And we need to make sure that whenever these changes are considered, we have sufficient time to come up with the solutions that are implementable, scalable, and at the same time deliver the equal safety of the products going forward.”
