We feel a responsibility to drive positive change across the communities where we operate and on our planet. We recognize that the climate crisis is a health crisis, with a disproportionate impact on vulnerable communities. Our environmental, social and governance (ESG) commitments aim to advance a healthier, more sustainable and equitable world — one where science meets humanity.
Responsibility
Environment
Climate
Healthy Climate, Healthy Lives™ is our groundbreaking initiative to eliminate fossil fuels from our operations and address climate, health and equity. We were the first Fortune 500 company that pledged to go fossil fuel free, spearheading positive change.
Learn more about our Healthy Climate, Healthy Lives™ goals and progress.
Water
Water plays a critical role in many aspects of our business, including our production processes. We are working to reduce our water use and make sure it adheres to high quality and safety standards before returning it to the environment.
Learn more about our efforts to reduce water usage and address pharmaceuticals in the environment in our Year in Review report.
Waste
We continue to advance our waste reduction targets and sustain our zero waste-to-landfill goal. We use the waste hierarchy, focusing first on reuse, composting and recycling.
We recognize that manufacturing medicines typically generates a large amount of waste relative to the amount of product produced. Minimizing waste reduces environmental impacts and disposal costs, resulting in more cost-effective production of medicines through a lower cost of goods. Biogen has applied metrics with targets to our manufacturing processes, tracking how much waste our processes generate and continuously working to improve efficiency.
- We cut the total waste generated from our operations by 50% from 2019 to 2021.
- We maintained a 100% diversion of waste from landfills in 2021.
Learn more about our waste reduction efforts in our Year in Review report.
Sustainable Drug Development
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, scientific labs use anywhere from five to 10 times more energy than typical office buildings1 and generate 5.5 metric tons of plastic a year2. Our Principles of Sustainable Drug Development aim to promote sustainability, process safety and efficiency in the ways we discover, develop and manufacture potentially life-changing therapies.
Learn more about our sustainable drug development principles, how we analyze our product life cycle, and green chemistry efforts.
Principles, Policies and Positions
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2021 Year in Review