ETERNAL: a project to reduce the environmental impact of pharmaceutical products
Angelini Pharma participated to the ETERNAL project kick-off meeting in Valencia, Spain on 27th and 28th September. This new four-year European Commision Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Action will contribute to sustainable development of pharmaceutical manufacture, use and disposal, by using and promoting full life cycle approaches covering design, manufacture, usage, and disposal, assessing the environmental risks of not only active pharmaceutical ingredients and residues or metabolites, but other chemicals and by-products of the production process. In other words, safe and sustainable pharmaceutical lifecycles by design.
Funded under the European Union’s Horizon Europe Framework Programme (with GA number 101057668) under the destination of maintaining an innovative, sustainable, and globally competitive health industry, ETERNAL will contribute to the broad challenge of maintaining ongoing access to safe, high quality and effective pharmaceutical treatments for citizens and animals whilst ensuring sustainable supply chains and consumption patterns and avoiding undue impacts of pharmaceutical residues on the environment.
To meet this ambition the ETERNAL partners will advance a roadmap of relevant technological innovations towards green production methods and one-step disposal.
The project partners will also be working proactively with other specialist researchers using holistic approaches to increase understanding of the environmental impact and toxicity of pharmaceuticals among industry, the research community, and regulators to inform pharmaceutical strategies and policies based on scientific evidence. Finally, ETERNAL will seek to create opportunities to catalyze behavioural change by piloting campaigns to inform consumers and patients about safe disposal methods for unused or expired medicines and promote the prescription of sustainable drug options among healthcare practitioners.
Angelini Pharma will actively participate in ETERNAL project through 2 different case studies, focused on substitution of appropriate treatment of recycled solvents and continuous manufacturing.
“The participation of Angelini Pharma in the ETERNAL project demonstrates the sustainability journey and the commitment of the company in investing in greener manufacturing practices, also through innovative European partnerships” says Enrico Giaquinto, Chief Industrial Operations Officer.