Recognising the link between climate change and public health, AstraZeneca announced Ambition Zero Carbon at the World Economic Forum 2020. The main targets linked to this ambition are: 1) achieve zero carbon emissions from our operations (sites and fleet) by 2025, without offsets; and 2) ensure our entire value chain is carbon negative by 2030.

From washing glassware to disposing of gloves, everything we do in our labs contributes to our environmental footprint. Through our global Green Labs initiative, AstraZeneca scientists learn about and assess lab practices with respect to waste, energy, water and chemicals with the intent to continuously minimise our environmental impacts.

We know we need to collaborate to find sustainable solutions for PIE. With this is mind, we invited a range of stakeholders to discuss PIE and emerging economies in Nairobi, Kenya. We focused on actions needed to manage the environmental risks posed from the increased use of pharmaceuticals due to increasing access to healthcare.

Scientists at our Gothenburg site in Sweden applied principles of green chemistry to reduce the environmental footprint of a purification process. This was done by replacing toxic solvents with recycled CO2. The new process significantly decreased the amount of raw materials used to create a product, as well as overall waste from the laboratory.

In recent years, Chennai, India has experienced an intensifying water crisis. This has dried up reservoirs and left many people without access to clean water. This prompted AstraZeneca employees based in Chennai to start lake restoration projects in partnership with the Environmentalist Foundation of India. In 2019, employees restored two lakes.

Our employees have great ideas about how to embed sustainability into our products. We held a product innovation initiative to put resources behind the best ideas. Seed funding was offered to winning groups to develop ideas that can deliver innovations aligned to our sustainability strategy and push the boundaries of science.