Pfizers miljö- och ansvarsblogg

Climate Change initiatives - part of our sustainability efforts

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Now there is just two days remaining until Earth Hour.

On Saturday, March 26, we will all switch off our lights between 20.30 and 21.30. Both our sites here in Sweden, the manufacturing site in Strängnäs and the office in Silverdal, Sollentuna, will participate. Pfizer thereby take an active part in the world’s largest environmental manifestation. I have written blog posts about energy and climate change efforts in general and Pfizer’s efforts specifically during this week(March 21, March 22, March 23).

Today I would like to draw the attention to the obvious matter that our energy and climate change initiatives are part of a much broader sustainability program. Our sustainability initiatives consist of several CSR and environmental activities. Updated information, in three levels of detail, regarding “responsible operations” (in Swedish “Ansvarsfullt företagande”) have now been published on the Swedish Pfizer webpage (in Swedish of course…):

- A brief introduction to “Our Responsibility”: Vårt Ansvarstagande

- Level 1: Pfizer and responsiblr operations: Pfizer och ansvarsfullt företagande

- Level 2: CSR and environmental initaitives - an important part of our responsibility: CSR- och miljöarbete - en central del av vårt ansvarstagande

- Level 3: Sustainability work in practice: Hållbarhetsarbete i praktiken

Earth Hour - it does not stop with the event on Saturday…

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As you all know by now, WWF’s climate change manifestation Earth Hour takes place at 20.30 to 21.30 on Saturday (March 26).

The “on-line news letter” csr-i-praktiken.se has published a fairly critical article about the event today called something like “Earth Hour fools citizens about their own environmental impact”. The criticism is based on the fact that people may think that they are actually making an environmentally important effort while they switch of their lights for one hour on Saturday. Instead of the lights they light up candels, and actually potentially increases the emissions of CO2…

Usually I agree with pretty much everything Per Grankvist and his colleagues at csr-i-praktiken.se write, but this time - definitely not! I am convinced that most people do understand that Earth Hour is a manifestation and a communication event, and not an action aimed to decrease the environmental impact in itself. We are sending a signal to decision makers around the globe!

And it is worth mentioning that WWF has been even more clear on this matter this year than the previous ones. They write the following on their web-page (in Swedish):

“I år vill vi att Earth Hour ska vara mer än att bara släcka ljuset. Nu sätter vi fokus på alla superhjältar som hjälper till och räddar planeten. Vilka superhjältar då? Jo, alla som utför hjältedåd i vardagen utnämner vi utan förbehåll till superhjältar. Det kan handla om att ta bussen istället för bilen till jobbet, äta vegetariskt en gång i veckan, byta till grön el eller vara med och sprida budskapen kring Earth Hour.”

Read more on WWF’s webpage about what you can do in your private life to become a “Climate Change Super Hero“.

And in your professional life, be inspired by some of the initiatives Pfizer has implemented at different sites around the globe in order to decrease our emissions of greenhouse gases:

-Reducing carbon on the home front in Ireland

-Freiburg, taking actionon climate change

-La Jolla, harnessing the sun’s energy to reduce GHG emissions

-Alleviating traffic, improving air quality

And don’t forget to switch off the lights on Saturday, like we will do at the Pfizer office building, and also back home.

The office rests dark in the background

Sustainable Brands 2011

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Today, Sustainable Brands 2011 released the results from their survey of the most sustainable companies in Sweden as rated by the general public. 3183 Swedish consumers between 16 and 79 years old have rated companies on environmntal sustainability and social sustainability. 151 companies from 12 different industrial sectors were included in the survey that was performed in the 4th quarter of 2010. See the total results via this link.

I wrote about the survey here on the blog already on March 7, when the first results were published. Those data showed that the pharmaceutical sector had the lowest over all score. An extremely bad result I have to admit!

So what can be said about the results. First of all, as is ponted out by IDG Research who performed the survey, Swedish owned corporations generally score better than foreign companies. This is probably due to recognition of the brands themselves. And to be honest, how well-known are the company brand names in the pharmaceutical industry to the general public? Our product names may be known, but the company name is not. The only possible exception to this would be AstraZeneca, due to the long history of Astra in Sweden.

But I will also add that even if the company brads would have been well-known to the public, I am not sure we would have scored much better as an industry. The reason being that we have not communicated our sustainability efforts historically. We primarely, and for good reasons, have communicated around the medical needs in society, and with professionals about the therapeutic effects of our products. But as I said in my blog post from March 7, I think it is about time to change. And we have a lot to learn from the winners of Sustianble Brands 2011. I believe that probably every Swede knows about different sustainability efforts by Coop and ICA. They have great programs, and they communicate smartly about those programs!

We need to become more transparent and actually more proud of our sustainability programs. And during a week like this one, leading up to Earth Hour on Saturday, communications around Energy and Climate Change seems about right! And if the general public knew about the pharmaceutical industry’s efforts in general, and of Pfizer’s Energy and Climate Change efforts specifically, I am sure we would have been rated much better in the survey!

I have shown this diagram several times on my blog. And to me it summarizes not only Pfizer’s high ambition in the area of fighting climate change, but also our very good records.

Pfizer Climate Change Objectives

From 2000 to 2007 we decreased our emissions of green house gases with 43 percent indexed by sales, which corresponds to a decrease in absolute numbers of almost 20%. And we will take another 20% until 2012.

Let us all within the pharmaceutical industry help ourselves by starting to communicate more openly and widely about our contributions to sustainable development. It does not only help us position ourselves stronger in different discussions in society, I personally actually believe that it is good for business as well. And last but not least it would make our employees more proud of working in this sector. When our employees see the results from Sustainable Brands 2011 they will not be happy…

Earth Hour on Saturday, March 26

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On Saturday, March 26, between 20.30 and 21.30, WWF’s Earth Hour takes place again.

And as I have done the last two years as a part of Pfizer’s participation in the event (see for instance the following blog posts from “Earth Hour week of 2010” and from 2009), I will utilize this week leading up to Earth Hour on Saturday to present different perspectives on the issue around climate change.

Today I chosen to highlight the debate article by Johan Rockström, professor and managing director for Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) and Stockholm Resilience Center, and Anders Wijkman, PhD, advisor to SEI and Tällberg Foundation, on SvD’s Brännpunkt. The article presents their new book “Den stora förnekelsen” (I would translate it to “The great denial”).

The authors discuss the great environmental challenges the world is facing, and also proposes some needed actions. Examples of those proposals are “new business models”, “a new Marshall plan”, and “an international agreement on climate change”. The discussions on the latter topic is of course of extra interest on a day like this one - the first day of the “Earth Hour week”.

It is hard for us as individuals sometimes to understand the full scope of the environmental problems and realizing what changes are required. One small and simple step however that we can all commit to is:

Participate in Earth Hour on Saturday. Switch of the lights!

Pharma Network, Pharmaceuticals and the Environment

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Today I gave a presentation at a meeting with Pharma Network. In the invitation to the network meeting, Jonny Sågänger and Kristofer Petraeus from Svenska Nyhetsbrev who runs the network, had written the following (in Swedish, sorry to you non-Swedish readers):

“Välkommen till nätverksträff i Pharma network!

Läkemedelsindustrin och miljöfrågorna

Möt Bengt Mattson från Pfizer och LIF, utsedd till Årets Läkemedelsprofil 2009 för sitt mångåriga arbete med att föra in miljö som ett allt viktigare område på läkemedelsindustrins agenda.

Bengt ger en bred och generell bild av branschens och industrins syn på miljöfrågorna. Hur långt har vi kommit i dagsläget och vad är möjligt framöver? Vilka möjligheter och begränsningar finns det i miljöarbetet?”

I guess you know by now if you follow my blog that I really like to give presentation such as this one, but I have to say that I had mixed feelings going in to Stockholm city today. My father had a stroke just before the weekend and he is at the hospital in a coma. But I felt I needed a break, and this was perhaps just what I needed today…

Sustainable Development presentation

I called my presentation “Sustainable Development - a core element of strategic business development”, and my message was that environmental sustainability as well as social sustainability presents business opportunities for us as an industry. I used several of my favourite slides, e.g the one I have borrowed from Stina Billinger at SPP:

The Sustainable Quadrant

Read more about the Sustainable Quadrant in my blog post from Dec 2, 2010. Another one of my favourite slides is the Walderik-Mattson pyramid:

Walderik-Mattson pyramid

Read more about this pyramid in my blog post from March 29 last year (in Swedish unfortunately…).

I did also of course talk about different sustainability initiatives that the industry has taken. One of them is the environmental classification of pharmaceutical substances on Fass.se.

Environmental classification of fass.se

Read more about the classification initiative via this link.

And finally let me also mention that I presented the schematic figure that I call “4 steps to a sustainable use of pharmaceuticals”:

Read more about this schematic on my blog post from Feb 8, 2011.

Thanks to Jonny and Kristofer from Pharma Network for arranging the meeting and thanks to you participating in the discussion. I appreciated the discussions, and I actually needed the break today…