The ‘Eco-design Playbook’: A step towards a holistic integration of eco-design in drug
development
Eco-design aims to integrate environmental aspects into product design and development with the goal of reducing the environmental footprint throughout all stages of a medicine’s lifecycle. Green chemistry is a component of eco-design. One of its principles aims to minimize waste and the use and generation of hazardous substances in the development of chemical products.1 These approaches not only give us the opportunity to protect the environment but also maximize efficiencies and reduce production timelines and costs.
To make eco-design part of our culture and daily business, we’ve created the ‘Eco-design
Playbook’ a checklist of eco-design parameters that we evaluate for every project at pre-defined milestones during drug development of small molecules and biologics.
“We’ve been active in the field of Green Chemistry for over 10 years. This gained expertise was instrumental in our journey to sustainable medicine development through holistic eco-design. This encompasses the raw materials for making the drug substance, the drug product, the device and packaging, all the way to distribution of the medicine, patient use, and end-of-life” says Frank Roschangar, Highly Distinguished Research Fellow from Development Sciences, Innovation Unit Sustainability at Boehringer. “We have also built significant know-how in the implementation of eco-design in biologics development – we developed and applied advanced molecular and bioreactor modeling tools to intensify our manufacturing processes to increase productivity, reduce resource consumption, and achieve a lower environmental footprint,” he adds.