Seven innovative technologies reducing climate impact in pharma processing

By Emily Newton www.revolutionized.com

Climate change and the pharmaceutical industry are inseparable. As climate issues grow more severe, public health will decline and critical pharma production resources will become more scarce. At the same time, conventional pharmaceutical manufacturing techniques are environmentally destructive.

The industry must stop this self-destructive cycle. Thankfully, as complex as these issues are, modern technology poses a solution. Here are seven leading examples of innovations reducing the climate impact of pharma processing.

1. Machine Learning

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the single most impactful technology for reducing pharmaceuticals’ climate impact. Machine learning, in particular, makes it easier to optimise operations across production and the supply chain to become more sustainable.

Energy analysis is particularly promising, as power generation is the biggest source of carbon emissions in pharmaceuticals. Machine learning can identify where most of this consumption occurs and highlight inefficiencies to inform more effective improvements. Similarly, AI can uncover how to shorten shipping routes, reduce packaging materials and other resource optimisation strategies.

In virtually every aspect of operations, machine learning can find issues and suggest solutions for faster, more accurate sustainability initiatives. Pharma companies must capitalise on that potential. However, they must also ensure they power their IT infrastructure through renewables, as AI itself is energy-intensive.

2. IoT Tracking Solutions

The Internet of Things (IoT) is another disruptive technology with considerable potential for pharmaceutical sustainability. These connected sensors can report real-time data on various processes to provide more insight into emissions and enable quick responses to prevent waste.

Supply chain emissions — which are 11.4 times higher than operational emissions on average — are the most significant beneficiary of this technology. IoT tracking solutions can reveal where the longest delays or most idle times happen in transportation. Pharma companies can then adjust their supplier strategies and logistics routes to avoid these inefficiencies.

IoT tracking can also monitor product quality, alerting stakeholders of potential issues in transit. Drivers can respond by changing their delivery schedules to ensure they get sensitive pharmaceuticals to safe destinations before they expire, preventing waste.

3. Gene Editing

A more pharma-specific innovation to capitalise on is gene editing. While emissions may be the most obvious target, pharmaceuticals’ resource consumption is another key part of its environmental impact. Many drugs rely on scarce or energy-intensive natural materials, but genetic engineering can produce more sustainable alternatives.

Technologies like CRISPR can produce more resilient crop variants to ensure natural pharma ingredient supplies remain despite harsher climates. Similarly, suppliers could use gene editing to create plants requiring less water or fertiliser, reducing these farms’ ecological risks.

In more extreme cases, pharma companies could create compounds in a lab environment instead of relying on plants or animals. Similar biotechnology could produce pharma ingredients from fermentation or natural growth instead of energy-hungry manufacturing processes.

4. Renewable Energy

Technology doesn’t have to be so complex to produce meaningful results, either. One of the most straightforward yet impactful ways to reduce pharma processing’s carbon footprint is to switch to renewable energy.

While once unreliable, solar and wind power are now viable for industrial-scale usage. Energy storage technologies like lithium batteries or hydrogen fuel cells make them more practical by offsetting their intermittency. Newer, more energy-efficient HVAC and lighting systems further extend the usability of green power.

Since renewables rely on natural occurrences, they’re not equally effective across all areas. Pharma producers can account for this by purchasing carbon offsets when their current locations aren’t ideal for wind or solar or building new facilities in renewable-friendly areas.

5. Vapour Compression Distillation

Pharmaceuticals’ water usage is another key concern to address. Conventional methods of producing water for injections (WFI) waste a lot of water and consume significant energy. Vapour compression (VC) distillation is a more efficient alternative.

VC distillation uses 70% less energy than multiple-effect distillation, the conventional method for making WFI. Much of these power savings stem from VC distillation’s ability to work at ambient temperatures, reducing heating requirements. It’s also higher-capacity, more versatile and requires less pre-treatment, further reducing related energy consumption.

This water purification technique is also more water-efficient than older alternatives. Using stainless steel instead of soft membranes leads to less rejected water, and many VC equipment come with recovery systems for efficient recycling.

6. Active Packaging

Active product packaging is another more specialised innovation with significant sustainability potential. This practice involves reusable cooling and packaging materials in the cold chain instead of traditional, single-use alternatives.

The primary benefit of this strategy is that it encourages a circular economy. Companies throughout the pharmaceutical supply chain must collaborate to share instead of relying on faster but more wasteful processes. Even though this means more logistics workflows, the savings outweigh the added complexity.

Early examples show that active packaging produces 90% fewer greenhouse gas emissions than passive alternatives. These savings stem from reduced energy expenditure in discarding single-use packaging and battery-powered cooling systems’ more efficient operation.

7. Building Control Automation

Pharma companies must also address emissions from their non-production processes. Lighting, HVAC and similar building operations are easy to overlook but account for a considerable portion of overall energy consumption. Automating their control minimises these power withdrawals.

Smart thermostats and similar solutions use AI to analyse and adapt to real-time operating conditions. Consequently, they can ensure consistent lighting, heating and cooling levels while using as little energy as possible. Over time, they’ll gather more data to inform their controls, making them more accurate.

These adjustments seem small, but they make a considerable difference over the scale of an entire production facility. Much of a conventional system’s energy consumption ends up as waste, so by enabling real-time adaptation, pharma companies operate much more efficiently without changing other processes.

New Technology Makes Sustainable Pharma Possible

Pharmaceuticals are essential, but conventional methods of making them are unsustainable. The industry must adapt to keep protecting public health while preventing more severe challenges from climate change. The road to sustainability is long and complex, but it’s an essential transition for all businesses in the sector.

Technologies like these seven innovations make that long, difficult path shorter and easier. By combining these solutions, pharma manufacturers can make significant strides toward a greener future without sacrificing production levels.