Pfizers miljö- och ansvarsblogg

The final phase of the Dizza Tobak project…

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We are now in the final weeks of the Dizza Tobak project…

The project was initiated three years ago. It has been a collaboration between, among others, Pfizer Foundation, Pfizer AB, SAMBA, A Non Smoking Generation, and American Cancer Society (ACS). The project is a tobacco prevention initiative, where teenagers are creating e.g. videos to share the message that “tobacco is NOT cool” through their social media channels and through other communication channels. Their contributions have been uploaded on the Dizza Tobak web site. Have a look - there are so many good pieces there! If you want more details on the project please read any of my many blog posts on Dizza Tobak. You’ll find them in the “Dizza Tobak Category Archive“. 

Anders Lönegård, the project manager from SAMBA, is right now finalizing “Dizza Tobak - the Book” and “Dizza Tobak - the Movie” where stories, experiences, lessons learned etc will be told. I promise to come back to the topic as soon as there are more stuff to share. It has been a very successful project, and it is definitely worth sharing!

Stockholm County Council’s new environmental program

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I read in yesterday’s Pharma Online newsletter that Stockholm County Council (SLL, Stockholms Läns Landsting), with their new Environmental Program 2012-2016, has sent a “challenge” to the Swedish government, other county councils and municipalities around Sweden.

Gustav Andersson, with a political responsability for environmental matters in Stockholm County Council, says in a press release that (nota bene: it is my own translation here):

“We will work faster, at a high speed, in several environmental areas with our tough objectives. Moreover, we challenge others!”

Pharmaceuticals is among the areas for environmental objectives. SLL says that they will continue their work to reduce the environmental impact from the usage of pharmaceuticals. A tool for this work is of course SLL’s own pamphlet of environmentally classified active pharmaceutical ingriedients, which is based on data from LIF’s classification scheme avalable through Fass.se. That makes good sense of course. But what frightens me is when they say that (once again my translation and words, not their)

“we will phase out all environmentally hazardous pharmaceuticals and chemicals”.

There are several life saving pharmaceuticals, which according to the classification scheme may very well be rated “environmentally hazardous”. To phase them out, e.g. products for chemotherapy, should not in my opinion be an objective for a county council. A wise use of the products, with safety precautions of course implemented, is to me a clear responsibility for a county council. Patients that need the therapy should of course have access to the treatment. I do not think actually that anyone in the County Council would argue here. It rather shows the problems of setting, and communicating, environmental objectives. Even if the use of “hazardous substances” has increased (which may be warranted due to an increase in patients with certain forms of cancer for instance) the County Council may have done a magnificent work within the environmental program.

The “right use” of pharmaceuticals - from the unique patient’s perspective and from a more holistic perspective on public health and environment - is not always a very simple discussion to take…

Nature and Environment Prize 2012

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I just realized that very soon (on Monday, Dec 12) is the last day to send in nominations to the Nature and Environment Prize 2012. It is a prize awarded by the Nordic Council, and it is intended for an individual, a company or an organization that have made great contribution to bio-diversity. Since bio-diversity is of great important to us all, and not least to the pharmaceutical industry and patients around the globe (several pharmaceutical substances come from nature), I of course like to draw your attention to this. If you know anyone who should be worth this - send in the nomination!

Interesting environmental discussions in several fora

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I have had two very exciting days, full of interesting discussions om pharmaceuticals and the environment, in three very different fora. Yesterday morning I had an internal meeting at the Pfizer office in Silverdal in Sollentuna, Sweden, where I met Pfizer colleagues working with our off-patent product portfolio. We had good discussions on green pharmaceuticals:

- What it is

- How to evaluate greenness and how to “certify” it

- And what type of business opportunities there could be with a greener product portfolio

We of course entered in to really interesting discussions on green critiera and green economic incentives. For details on these matters please read my blog posts from e.g. Oct 3, Sept 28, and Sept 23. We also tried to put the “greener product portfolio discussions” in a broader perspective of other types of “added values” we can bring to society. For more details on these ideas read the blog post from e.g. Oct 4 and Aug 23. Please also read a detailed discussion on “4 steps to a sustanable use of pharmaceuticals” in the blog post from Feb 8.

4 steps to sustainability

After the internal meeting, I met with the expert group on Pharmaceuticals and the Environment, supporting the All Party Committee on Environmental Objectives (in Swedish “Miljömålsberedningen“). You can read about our work in my blog posts from e.g. Nov 14 and  Sept 19. It is really a privilege to sit down and have very open and honest discussions with representatives from pretty much every single stakeholder in the sector. Not surprisingly we had good and long discussions on several of the ideas on actions/objectives that were originally presented by the Swedish MPA in the Dec 16, 2009 report on “increased environmental requirements on pharmaceutical manufacturing” (find some of my comments to those ideas in my blog post from Dec 17, 2009):

- Inclusion of environmental requirements in GMP

- Inclusion of Environmental Risk Assessments into the market authorization process for pharmaceuticals

- Considerations of environmental aspects in the pricing and reimbursement system, i.e. green criteria and green economic incentives

And today, the discussions on these matters and others continued when LIF’s (LIF - the Swedish Research Based Pharmaceutical Industry Association) environmental committee met at the LIF Office in Stockholm. For me it was a special meeting, since I “transferred” from chairman of the committee to “administratively responsible” for the committee. The reason of course that I nowadays work part time at the LIF Office. And I like to take the opportunity here to say thanks for all support Matilda Holst have given me during the years in her role at the LIF Office when I have been working as the chairman, and to also welcome Gisela Holm from AstraZeneca as the new chairperson of the committee.

In addition to the already mentioned items up for discussion today at the committee meeting, we also had a good presentation made by Karl Lilja from IVL, the Swedish Environmental Research Institute, on the environmental classification of pharmaceutical substances scheme at Fass.se. IVL has been the reviewer of all company submissions of environmental classifications of pharmaceutical substances since the beginning of 2005, so they have built up a significant amount of knowledge, experience and data. Read more about the Swedish classification scheme at Fass.se and on LIF’s web site.

So many interesting discussions - it is really a privilege to be working with all these people in such an interesting field! I am really looking forward to 2012! Discussions will be more intense, and more interesting, than ever!

Action Item 7.2 in the National Pharmaceutical Strategy

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Yesterday I participated in a conference arranged by the “County Council Network on Pharmaceuticals and the Environment” (in Swedish: Landstingens nätverk för Läkemedel och Miljö). This was the third conference arranged by the network (see my comments from last year’s conference via this link).

I had the opportunity to participate in the morning session which started out with Åke Wennmalm (SustainPharma and previously the Environmental Director at Stockholm County Council) describing a 10-year long journey with Pharmaceuticals and the Environment. There is a lot of things that have happened in the last decade!

After Åke, Nina Viberg from SKL entered the stage and she described some ongoing initiatives, e.g. the National Pharmaceutical Strategy and the All-Party Committee on Environmental Objectives. You can read more about these initiatives in my blog post “A Regulatory Update on Pharmaceuticals and the Environment“.

Nina passed the word over to me, and I went in to some more details on the environmental action items (especially items 7.1 and 7.2) in the National Pharmaceutical Strategy:

7.1. Investigate if the environmental aspects should be considered when decisions on subsidy for a pharmaceutical are decided (Lead: Ministry of Health and Social Affairs): Review of possibilities to – within the context of the national reimbursement system - increasingly take environmental considerations.

7.2. Encourage voluntary control of emissions from pharmaceutical factories (Lead: LIF): Introduction of a voluntary environmental labeling of pharmaceutical products.

As you will know from my previous blog posts, I will be the project manager for action item 7.2 and will hopefully be able to connect 7.2 strongly with action item 7.1 which is to be managed by Sofia Wallström in her review. I think it is very important, and it feels reasonable,  that society presents some form of economic incentives if industry is supposed to “volontary implement a system and an assessment model”… I described the work that has been made so far to develop a assessment model by the task force initiated by the LIF Round Table (see the blog post from Sept 28 and follow the links within that blog post for more details).

For the first time I also showed a draft project plan for the “action item 7.2 work task”. As you notice, it is still a draft but it will soon become more formal and official…

Draft project plan...

It might be hard to read but in essence it has four deliverables:

1. An e-learning tool to educate and train colleagues: “What is a green pharmaceutical, and how do you assess grenness?”

2. Development of a model for environmental assessment of pharmaceuticals, with clear criteria to identify green products

3. Development of a tool/methodology/connection between the assessment model and green economic incentives within the pricing and reimburesment system

4. Establish of an organisation to handle/manage the models and systems

As you understand there are very important cross references between 7.2 and 7.1 (i.e. the Sofia Wallström review if environmental aspects can be taken within the frame of the pricing and reimbursement system)!

More to come - stay tuned!