One of the topics discussed yesterday was sustainable cities, using Malmö as an example and focusing on  private public partnerships. We had a very interesting and fruitful discussion with Christer Larsson from the Malmö municipality. There are extremely many interesting initiatives ongoing, in Malmö City as well as in the greater region of Skåne, but also within the area of Malmö and Copenhagen together. You just have to read Christers blog: helastaden.se. Follow Christer’s work and get inspired!

“To achieve this goal, we have created an accountability model which will make every Microsoft business unit responsible for the carbon they generate – creating incentives for greater efficiency, increased purchases of renewable energy, better data collection and reporting, and an overall reduction of our environmental impact.

To put this into action, we’re creating a new, internal carbon fee within Microsoft, which will place a price on carbon. The price will be based on market pricing for renewable energy and carbon offsets, and will be applied to our operations in over 100 countries. The goal is to make our business divisions responsible for the cost of offsetting their own carbon emissions.”

Absolutely a very interesting move! I am really looking forward to follow the development of this initiative. It could be a brand new role model for industry across several sectors.

MiljöRapprten Direkt comments upon the fact that the study shows that values such as environment and sustainability have fallen on Swedes’ priority lists. Gunnel Eneroth, project manager for Sverigestudien, says the following to MiljöRapporten Direkt:

“Före finanskrisen var miljö och hållbarhet högre värderade begrepp, sedan tappade de värderingarna i betydelse och har inte hämtat sig sedan dess” (in English it would be something like “before the financial crises, environment and sustainability were ranked higher, but they have fallen since then and not made it back”)

Personally I do however find it somewhat comforting and promising that other values which are also critical for longterm sustainability still seem to be highly ranked among Swedes:

Responsibility, justice, and honesty

To me those values are also very closely related to Corporate Responsibility (in Swedish: “Ansvarsfullt företagande” of which you can read more on pfizer.se for instance). If citizens, politicians, corporate leaders and employees have such values in focus, and act accordingly, I am convinced that environmental and social sustainability will remain fundamental to our society. And values such as environment and sustainbility will once again climb on the priority lists!

Read about all the details of Sverigestudien in this pdf. It is an interesting read!

As you may be aware of, especially if you have followed my blog previously, I personally do not have any doubts about climate change and global warming. It happens and the use of fossile fuels contributes strongly to global warming. You can read more about my opionion on the matter in the following blog posts for instance: March 27 2011, March 24 2011, and Feb 4 2011. In the last of those blog posts, you will both find a link to Pfizer’s global website where our programs around energy and climate change is discussed, and also an important quote from our previous global manufacturing operations president, Nat Ricciardi:

“Climate change is the world’s greatest global environmental challenge and has the potential to adversely impact the health of millions of people”

It is our opinion that climate change has human health impacts including:
- Illness from more heat waves
- Unsanitary conditions due to increased coastal flooding
- Vector-borne diseases with longer transmission seasons
- Change in geographical distribution of diseases”

It surprises me that Swedish municipality politicians and managers seem to be climate change skeptics…

I found the event exciting and promising. A lot of discussions and meetings face-to-face took place, and hopefully this will results in several innovations to be developed into entrepreneurial successes! The Life Science sessions focused primarely on new waste water treatment techniques which would be able to eliminate not only pharmaceutical residues but also other types of chemicals in the waste water. All the speakers agreed upon the fact that pharmaceuticals may pose a risk to the environment, but they still are extremely important to society. And hence, if they cannot by handle by “up-stream initiatives” (at least not entirely) end-of-pipe solutions, i.e. upgraded waste water treatment installations, are needed. You are able to read more on this matter in an article published on Newsmill today: “This way Sweden can do a good thing environmentally and on the same time open up for technology export“. It will be interesting to follow the discussions on this matter.

You can read a more extensive article entitled “Dags för samhället att på allvar stödja den gröna omställningen i läkemedelssektorn” (in English roughy “Time for society to support the green conversion in the pharmaceutical sector”) about this matter in today´s issue of LIF’s newsletter on LIFe-time.se.

We made a few changes which were more semantic in character. The more important change proposal was to align the “social responsibility requirement” (see “D3 Social considerations in manufacturing” in the criteria document) with the social requirement paragraphs in other MSR criteria documents. One consequence of that is that we will be utilizing the “CSR compass tool” in the tendering business within the pharmaceutical industry. It will be an interesting exercise.

I was happy that the participants in the meeting all agreed that any potentially larger changes to the criteria document should wait until we have seen the green criteria assessment model being developed within item 7.2 in the National Pharmaceutical Strategy. As you know if you follow my blog I am the project leader for that work as part of my LIF assignment. Hence, more on that to come over the coming months. Stay tuned!

As you know, I really looked forward to listen to Gunilla Hulth-Backlund from TLV (the Dental and Pharmaceutical Benefits Agency). I was curious to hear what she would say about health economy and sustainable pharmaceuticals. Unfortunately she couldn’t make it to the seminar so Fredrik Nilsson from TLV had to step in instead. And everybody who have been a part of the discussions on green economic incentives the last year know that Fredrik has great knowledge in the field. He gave a good and solid presentation, where he explained why he tend to favour green incentives in the generic business rather than adding an “environmental factor” in the price mechanism model for patented pharmaceuticals. We had good discussions around that and to make a long story short: We all have great expectations on the review by Sofia Wallström: Should environmental considerations be taken within the framework of the Swedish pricing and reimbursement system? The different stakeholders in the pharmaceutical sector seem to be in principle well alinged on this matter (although we might have different opinions on smaller details). We like to see a “YES” from Sofia in September. It will for sure be very interesting!

I also like to add two more comments:

First of all, I have to give Magnus Thyberg from SLL credit for his comment that we should try to find a more appropriate expression than “green pharmaceuticals”. Could a pharmaceutical, or actually any industrial product, ever be “green”. Are they not just more or less “non-green”? All industrial processes have environmental impacts and hence we should try to make the product as green as possible - but could it actually be “completely green”? He is right of course and we need to find appropriate wording as we move the ongoing processes forward.

And then secondly: Most stakeholders have a common picture of the issues and also on the proposals for actions. Swedish MPA’s proposal on inclusion of environmental requirements into GMP has solid support, as well as the green incentives ideas discussed above. Everyone also understand that a model with well established green criteria to distinguish between “green” and “non-green” pharmaceuticals is essential for success in all the different processes discussed. And as you probably know, developing such a model is part of the project 7.2 in the Swedish National Pharmaceutical Strategy. A project that I have the opportunity to manage in my part-time assignment at LIF. That work is on-going as we speak, actually I will meet several of the members of the LIF Environmental Committee later on today to continue our work on the model and the different criteria. Fun and interesting!

Thanks to APL for arranging the seminar yesterday!

- The President of APL, Eva Sjökvist Saers, talks about sustainable business development

- APL’s environemntal manager Zeljko Tucak talks about the trends in the pharmaceutical industry when it comes to social responsibility

- I (and whether or not I am one of the prominent speakers I will leave up to you to decide…) will talk about green pharmaceuticals and the need for green economic incentives to drive further green evolutions. You probably know that you can read more about my ideas around green criteria and green economic incentives in other blog posts, e.g. Sept 28, 2011.

- The environmental policy of SLL (Stockholm County Council) will be presented by Magnus Thyberg. The policy will be discussed from a public procurement perspective - yet another very important driver for a green evolution in the sector. But, and that is imortant, it will work only if the green criteria really mean anything when the County Council make their final decisions in the tender process. And also, do not forget that, actually perform follow-ups of the performance among their different suppliers.

- Charlotte Unger, environmental manager at Swedish MPA, will talk about the need to have both medical efficiency and patient safety as well as sustainable development in mind when decisions are taken in the health care sector.

- Gunilla Hulth-Backlund, Director General at TLV (the Dental and Pharmaceutical Benefits Agency) will present how the Swedish pricing and re-imbursement agency looks upon health economy and sustainble pharmaceuticals.

I am really looking forward to the presentations the concluding panel discussion. I am especially interested to listen to the presentation by Gunilla H-B, since her opinions about sustainability is important to understand in order to see how green criteria and green incentives could be implemented into our pricing and reimbursement system…

We have an interesting day ahead of us!