Pfizers miljö- och ansvarsblogg

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…

CSR is only sustainable if integrated in business strategies

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The last few days, two of my favourite CSR and environmental newsletters on-line, “CSR-i-praktiken” and “Miljöaktuellt” have had two interesting articles on the topic “CSR should build financial value and revenue” in order to be sustainable. One of the articles has been written by my good friend and my favourite CSR-guru Daniel Steinholtz, and the other one by the chairman of Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, Peje Emilsson.

I do really agree with both of them, which is probably not a big surprise to anyone of you who have followed my blog previously. Read for instance my blogpost from March last year entitled “CSR - an integrated part of the business“.

I am happy to see that more and more people dare to stress what is actually quite obvious: It is not only OK to make a profit from your sustainability programs, it is actually a pre-requisite for those programs to be sustainable themselves!

CSR trends

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What are the major trends when it comes to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and/or sustainability? Part of the answer to that is given by one of my favourite “newsletters” today, CSR-i-praktiken.se (unfortunately for foreign readers, it is in Swedish…).

CSR-i-praktiken met with 5 experts from different sectors and regions around the world, discusing about CSR-trends and came up with the following:

James Goodman, at Forum for the Future, talkes about the growth in Africa and the opportunities for green products on the African continent. He also believes that biodiversity will become more and more important for companies and finally that “consumer power” will play a more and more important role. I can only agree with James on this. I strongly believe in, and really hope for, a continuing growth in Africa and the opportunities this presents for the people living in Afriuca but also for companies around the world. From a pharmaceutical industry perspective the unmet medical needs in Africa are enormous but there are a lot of challenges to be managed to meet those needs. Read about my experiences from looking into the health care sector in Uganda in October 2010.

When it comes to biodiversity I think it is obvious to many of us that this topic will be “as hot” as the climate change issue. The world has huge challenges there and industry has to collaborate with other stakeholders in society to help solving the problems. Biodiversity is critical to the pharamceutical industry, just remember the high numbers of drugs today with substances coming from nature. And as you know, I am a strong believer in “consumer power”, and always want to see “market driven solutions”. See for instance the ongoing discussions on “green incentives” for pharmaceuticals.

Åsa Pettersson from Vattenfall thinks e.g. that the tough financial situations for many companies will draw focus to “cost saving sustaianbility solutions”. One area where this is absolutely true is energy saving programs and climate change initiatives. As I have dscussed here on the blog before Pfizer’s climate change efforts have resulted in a huge decrease in greenhouse gas emissions, which to a large parts equals to lower energy costs.

43% reduction between 2000 and 2007

Alex Macintosh, at Ecomundi Ventures, sees trends on increased transparency and on more “matured CSR strategies”. CSR becomes an intregrated part of the business. Once again I fully agree. You can read about my thinking on CSR and business strategies and see how CSR is part of the business within our operations in the so-called Walderik-Mattson pyramid.

Walderik-Mattson pyramid

I also appreciate that Martin Schmidt, from Serious Nature, clearly stresses the importance of industry initiatives within the sustainability area. He says that regulatory changes are slow, but he sees a lot of good initiatives coming from industry. Once again I like to relate that to the discussions on “green incentives” as a faster, and probably more efficient, way to see changes within the pharmaceutical sector than regulatory initiatives (e.g. GMP-regulatory changes).

And then finally Katarina Pelin, from the city of Malmö, talkes about the importance that publicly owned operations supports private initiatives. I am a very strong supporter of collaborations between all different stakeholders in society. We can only reach our common goals if we collaborate. Katarina also talks about how more and more social sustainability initiatives are added to the environmental sustainability initaitives on the agendas. My perspective on this is that social sustainability is not only added to the agenda, but environmental and social sustainability efforts are actually more and more combined into joint initiatives. Pfizer’s work on Access to clean water is one good example on such an initiative.

Empowered patients

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Stakeholder dialogues are an important part of all CSR programs (Corporate Social Responsibility). To discuss with stakeholders helps forming programs and initiatives in order to reach the objectives set up.

Today and yesterday I have had very interesting discussions with our peer companies within LIF (The Swedish Association of the Pharmaceutical Industry) and others stakeholders regarding patient empowerment. The empowered patient has been discussed for some years, and several trends in Swedish as well as in other markets underlines the importance of empowerment, e.g.:

- more and more information is available on-line, information that may change the “power balance” in the relation between a physician and his/her patient,

- the ability for EU-citizens to seek health-care in other EU-countries, and

- the “patient choice reform” in Sweden, where patients can chose the supplier of their health-care (regardless whether it is privately or publicly operated).

But was does it really mean with an “empowered patient”. In my opinion the patient needs both the ability to make the choices and the information needed to make those choices correctly. And how do patients get hold of the needed information? What responsibility does the pharmaceutical industry have, and what are the responsibilities of PAGs (Patient Advocacy Groups) and government respectively?

We also discussed the potential difference between strong individual empowered patients and strong PAGs. Strong individual empowered patients probably rest on strong patient right regulations whereas a strong position for the Patent Advocacy Groups could more rely on clear and transparent processes for how decisons are made within agencies, County Councils and in other parts of the health-care sector.

I look forward to continuing discussions on Patient Empowerment, which in my view is closely linked to a lot of other areas in our CSR programs. Examples of such programs are:

- health promotion and different types of prevention initiatives,

- a wider usage of patient support programs, and

- consumer preference for “green branded pharmaceuticals”.

Solutions for a Sustainable Development

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IVL, the Swedish Environmental Research Institute, arranged a seminar yesterday to discuss trends and future research needs to secure a Sustainable Development. Björn Stigson, from WBCSD (the World Business Council for Sustainable Development) was the first speaker, and he talked about the global trends. And I have to admit that it is always impressing to listen to Björn. Not only because he himself has a lot of knowledge and skills, but also because he represents an organization where the value of the member companies is around 7000 billion dollars, and these companies reach roughly half the planet’s population every single day with services and products.

Björn talked about the rapid population increase, and pointed out that in year 2050, 85% of the world’s population will be living in developing countries. There will be tough battles against income poverty, energy poverty, mobility poverty, and water poverty. He also talked about the demografic shift, i.e. people living longer. All of this will lead to a resoursce and carbon constrained world, where the equity-issue, i.e. who has the right to the scarce resources, will be very challeging. Björn shared some very interesting thoughts with us regarding the “embedded carbon dioxide releases” in the products that US and Europe buy from China. Since we consume the products, shouldn’t the releases be allocated to us rather than to China? More than half of the products Germany imports from China are manufactured in German owned factories in China… Who is responsble for the releases?

I was happy to see that Björn used the “sustainable quadrant diagram” from their Vision 2050 report. If you have followed my blog previosuly, you know that I am a big fan of this diagram (I first saw it in a presentation by Stina Billinger from SPP).

The Sustainable Quadrant

If we like to accomplish the huge challenge of moving countries and people all around the globe to that sustainable quadrant, then changes are badly needed! Björn ponted out that the “green race” already has begun. Who (meaning countries as well as companies) will be the leader on sustainable solutions? EU has a pretty strong position today, but is challenged by the very innovative US. However, both these “old economies” will probably be beaten by the strong (and very devoted to green innovations) new economies, e.g. China and Korea. Björn said that he believed that “the green race” will be a much stronger driver for change than e.g. UN Climate Change Conference and similar international forums. Bearing in mind the extremely low expectations for the COP16 meeting, it is easy to agree with Björn… Björn’s clear message to all of us was that in this “green race”, companies has an ability to play an important role as the “solution providers”.

After the “global perspective” from Björn, Anders Ehrling (CEO at Scandic Hotels and previosuly an executive at SAS) brought us down from the macro perspective to the micro perspective. What can be done in the different companies, on a day-to-day basis? A lot of the initaitives that are undertaken is “no rocket science”. Anders told us about the things they are doing in the hotels and the restaurants. From the re-use of towels in the hotels rooms, chosing the right energy sources, waste recycling in the kitchen etc. But it is very clear that also the smaller initiatives really pay off. See Scandic Sustainability Live Report - they are good today, and even better tomorrow!

One really interesting thing Anders told us, with his experiences both from the aviation industry and the hotel business, is that “green” has not really become the issue which steers customer’s choice. In the avaiation industry what really matters is “your time-table and the price”. In the hotel business what really matters is “location and price”. Anders wanted to see a discussion on potential “green incentives”. To really see a rapid growth of green solutions for the future there must be positive incentives going in the green direction. I couldn’t agree more. In the pharmaceutical sector we have the similar type of situation. It seems like the only thing that matters is “therapeutic effect and price”. Our customers do not seem to value aspects such as “greenness” either. I have written about this several times before here at the blog in relation to discharges from manufacturing of generics in e.g. India.

Some of IVL’s scientists then gave short examples of on-going research projects within IVL. One of the projects that was presented was the environmental classification of pharmaceutical substances on fass.se which is run by IVL in collaboration with LIF (the Swedish Association of the Pharmaceutical Industry).

The seminar closed with a brainstorming session where all the participants were asked to mention three areas where they saw research and/or development needs. My contribution to the session was the following:

- Green incentives (see the discussion above)

- How to visulize and communicate the value of the small environmental initiatives, delivered on a daily basis? How to we manage to make everyone of us a “green champion”?

- How to reach economic growth without an increase in resource utilization? The decoupling issue…

It will be interesting to see how IVL manages to create a structure in all these proposals and ideas. How do they find the solutions for a sustainable development?

A lot of good proposals...