01: Introduction
02: Solvents
03: Carbon
04: Catalysis
05: Waste
06: Progress
01: Introduction
02: Solvents
03: Carbon
04: Catalysis
05: Waste
06: Progress
Greening Global Health
Progress
Small changes in pharmaceutical manufacturing can add up to big environmental gains. From smarter solvent use to greener product design, incremental improvements collectively drive sustainable across the pharmaceutical industry, and beyond.
05: Waste
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05: Waste
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Pharmaceuticals play a vital role in enhancing the quality of life for billions of people. Manufacturing medicines leads to a tangled web of environmental challenges, as we have seen throughout this report. Countless processes throughout the value chain contribute to emissions, waste, and downstream effects on human, animal, and ecological health.
While the scale of these issues is daunting, there are many opportunities to green the pharmaceutical industry. Innovative science can drive stepwise advances in manufacturing. These improvements, in turn, reverberate across the industry. Cross-industry collaboration and information sharing are further building momentum in the transition toward sustainability.
In 1969, the Coca-Cola Company conducted a study to evaluate the raw material requirements, energy demands, and environmental impact of manufacturing and distributing different types of beverage containers. This study formed the basis of life cycle assessment (LCA), a tool used today across industries to quantify the total environmental impact of a process, product, or activity.
As packaged consumer goods companies used LCA to compare materials and end-of-life pathways, they normalized cradle-to-grave thinking and sustainable decision-making. These insights indirectly shaped both regulatory and consumer expectations, embedding life cycle impacts into supplier standards, ecolabeling, and corporate reporting frameworks that now affect pharmaceutical supply chains.
While pharmaceutical companies were relatively late to adopt LCA, the industry is today adapting these methods to capture the intricacies of the entire drug life cycle. LCA case studies help researchers identify specific “hot spots” of waste or emissions in the manufacturing process, from solvent use to packaging production.
This history shows that sustainability challenges and opportunities are interconnected—not only within the pharmaceutical sector but with adjacent industries.
The big picture: Promoting sustainability across industries
05: Waste
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05: Waste
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Many industries apply the concept of ‘polluter pays’ to address environmental impact, but this ultimately gets passed to the consumer.
David Leahy,
Vice President of Drug Substance Development at Biohaven Corresponding Author of the 2018 Review on Transition Metal Catalysis
“
Each year, the ACS Green Chemistry Institute Pharmaceutical Roundtable recognizes green chemistry innovations that advance sustainability initiatives across the pharmaceutical sector and allied industries. Here are some of the notable 2025 winners making an impact in pharmaceutical manufacturing and beyond:
Spotlighting the 2025 Green Chemistry Awards
A team of researchers from Merck & Co. (known as MSD outside the United States and Canada) and Sunthetics developed a novel process optimization technology, which applies active learning approaches to simplify sustainable process design. Their technology is especially impactful in complex operations that are expensive and challenging to evaluate experimentally.
The algorithmic process optimization technology can handle optimization problems with 11 parameters or more, such as temperature and reaction time. By facilitating process optimization across many factors that impact overall sustainability, it enables researchers to select non-toxic reagents, minimize material use, and reduce overall drug development costs.
Data Science and Modeling for Green Chemistry Award
Algorithmic process optimization for pharmaceutical development
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Pfizer’s team has been awarded the inaugural Green Discovery Chemistry prize for the walk-up automated reaction profiling (WARP) system, an open-access tool for profiling challenging reactions, reducing waste, and minimizing exposure to hazardous substances. The tool eliminates the time and waste associated with preparing liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS) samples and analysis. Researchers implemented an iChemExplorer/Agilent LC/MS instrument as a reactor and analysis tool and paired it with an automated report generator to track reaction progress over time.
WARP helps users enhance efficiency in various chemical processes while mitigating their overall environmental impact. The platform’s simple and user-friendly design makes it a versatile tool for chemists across industries to apply green chemistry principles in their operations.
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Green Discovery Chemistry Award
Walk-up automated reaction profiling system: A tool for reaction monitoring designed for discovery chemists
Corteva Agriscience’s winning submission leveraged green chemistry principles to design an efficient process for manufacturing Adavelt™ active fungicide. The team’s alternative approach replaced undesirable reagents with more sustainable alternatives, including furfural, a renewable feedstock from biomass. The redesigned system ended up eliminating three protecting groups, four steps, and the use of palladium. The result is a process that leverages renewable raw materials to deliver a cost-effective solution for crop disease protection while reducing the environmental impact of a valuable farming tool.
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Peter J. Dunn Award for Green Chemistry and Engineering Impact in the Pharmaceutical Industry
A sustainably designed manufacturing process to Adavelt™ active from renewable feedstocks
The chemical industry is one example. Because pharmaceutical manufacturing relies on many of the same feedstocks, solvents, and intermediates, LCA data generated for commodity and specialty chemicals could be transferred between industries. Methodologies developed to quantify emissions, water use, and waste in complex, multistep manufacturing processes provided a foundation for later application in producing active pharmaceutical ingredients.
Now, the pharmaceutical industry is increasingly dedicated to reducing emissions, greening their supply chains, and eliminating waste. These changes can, in turn, allow other sectors to become more environmentally friendly.
Sustainable practices in one industry can influence others and drive change over time. All science is fundamentally about learning from the discovery of others. So it is with sustainability. Progress will ultimately be achieved through collaboration between industries, companies, and individual researchers sharing innovative methods and practices and adapting advances to tackle their own challenges.
The ACS GCI Pharmaceutical Roundtable (GCIPR) is the leading organization dedicated to facilitating the integration of green chemistry and engineering in the pharmaceutical industry. In 2025, the ACS GCIPR celebrated its 20th year of partnership with global pharmaceutical companies working to drive sustainability in drug manufacturing and beyond.
The ACS GCIPR honored this milestone with a series of symposia, workshops, and webinars, expanding outreach to nearly 5,000 stakeholders across 45 countries.
ACS GCI Pharmaceutical Roundtable
Case Study
Learn more about GCIPR
In 2020, GSK leadership made a lofty pledge: despite having the highest emission intensity of any pharma company, it would cut its total emissions by 80% over the next 10 years.
Like its industry peers, GSK is focusing on reducing scope 3 emissions, which accounted for over 90% of total emissions at the 2020 baseline.
Achieving this goal has required a two-pronged approach. First, GSK is targeting 37% of its scope 3 emissions by collaborating with other industry leaders to encourage sustainable action among upstream suppliers.
But taking aim at emissions from patient use, which accounts for 53% of GSK’s scope 3 emissions, hinges primarily on a single product: metered-dose inhalers (MDIs).
Reference: GSK’s 2024 environmental impact report
GSK’s Total 2023 emissions = 9.63 million metric tons (t) of CO2-Eq
Scope 3 emissions = 8.98 million metric tons (t) of CO2-Eq
Scope 1 & 2 = 0.65 million metric tons (t) of CO2-Eq
Reference: GSK’s 2024 environmental impact report
GSK’s Total 2023 emissions = 9.63 million metric tons (t) of CO2-Eq
Scope 3 emissions = 8.98 million metric tons (t) of CO2-Eq
Scope 1 & 2 = 0.65 million metric tons (t) of CO2-Eq
Emissions from propellant-based inhaler use = 5.04 million t of CO2
GSK’s Ventolin (salbutamol) MDI, introduced in 1968, is ubiquitous in respiratory care and accounted for global sales of nearly $890 million in 2024. The dose delivery mechanism of Ventolin and other inhaler drugs uses 1,1,1,2-tetrafluoroethane (HFA-134a). This compound was chosen because its high vapor pressure allows it to achieve a strong spray-force mechanism and its ability to dissolve a wide range of drugs.
From the C&EN Archives: Salbutamol
Read about the history of this critical medicine.
Unfortunately, 1,1,1,2-tetrafluoroethane propellant traps over 1,400 times more heat than CO2, meaning that Ventolin use alone accounts for 45% of GSK’s total carbon footprint.
GSK aims to reengineer this flagship product by swapping 1,1,1,2-tetrafluoroethane for a new propellant, 1,1-difluoroethane (HFA-152a), which has one-tenth the global warming potential.
1,1-difluoroethane (HFA-152a)
1,1,1,2-Tetrafluoroethane
1,1,1,2-Tetrafluoroethane (HFA-134a)
GWP = 1430
Estimated 26.91 kgCO2e per device
Equivalent to driving 67 miles (108 km) in a car
1,1-Difluoroethane (HFA-152a)
GWP = 140
Estimated 2.06 kgCO2e per device
Equivalent to driving 5 miles (8 km) in a car
Reference: King, J.; et al., Decarbonising Respiratory Care: The Impact of a Low-Carbon Salbutamol Pressurised Metered-Dose Inhaler. Allergy 2025. DOI: 10.111/al.70141
But the replacement is far from a simple substitution. Revising the inhaler required reengineering both the drug formulation and the inhaler mechanism.
For regulatory approval, the updated product must deliver the same therapeutic effect through consistent particle size distribution, plume geometry, and lung deposition. Additionally, because HFA-152a is highly flammable, GSK’s factories must follow new safety precautions.
Trials of the updated inhaler began in 2021, and promising phase 3 results were announced in late 2025.
If successful, the reformulation will bring GSK much closer to achieving its ambitious 2030 climate goals. Replacing all Ventolin inhalers would cut the equivalent of 4.1 million metric tons of CO2 per year, approximately equivalent to the emissions of the state of Vermont.
Other companies might be compelled to follow GSK’s lead. Both US and European regulators have enacted plans to phase out HFCs for greener, next-generation propellants.
While initial commitments included exemptions for medical use of HFC, updated European Union frameworks are accelerating the HFC phasedown and eliminating these exceptions.
Rethinking a surprising source of carbon emissions
A Breath of Fresh Air
01: Introduction
01: Introduction
02: Solvents
02: Solvents
03: Carbon
03: Carbon
04: Catalysis
04: Catalysis
05: Waste
05: Waste
06: Progress
06: Progress