Greener Products and Solutions

The shortlist for Ethical Corporation's 9th Annual Responsible Business Awards has been announced. The winners will be revealed and celebrated at a glamorous Awards Dinner ceremony on 9th October in central London.

Global industries are redefining their core business strategies by adopting greener chemistry practices that are reinventing supply-chain ecosystems to design models that create value for all stakeholders – including the planet. By simply adopting greener chemistry practices, whole industries have seen positive benefits ranging from novel innovations, reduced operational waste and costs, to increased market presence by differentiating themselves amongst their competitors.

Despite an impressive start, single-use technology recycling is still in its infancy in the biopharma industry. The MilliporeSigma/Triumvirate partnership is the only one of its kind in the industry and is focused primarily on East Coast facilities. As global disposable plastic production continues to exceed the ability of waste management to keep up, recycling is becoming imperative.

For me, one of the key lessons from our program is that partnerships and a sustainable business model are key to making single-use recycling programs successful. The work to get to where we are today has been challenging but also rewarding – especially when you are working with truly innovative companies who are determined to find solutions to a difficult problem.

The Biopharma Single-use Product Recycling Program - a collaboration between MilliporeSigma and Triumvirate Environmental - collects, shreds, sterillises and recycles disposable plastics for the biopharmaceutical industry.

The program has facilitated the recycling of single-use bags, tubing and connectors, and cartridge and capsule filters at Triumvirate's plant in Pennsylvania since 2015.

Samy Ponnusamy, a green chemistry fellow at MilliporeSigma, explains the development of DOZN’s scoring system to Chem.info, saying, “We wanted to differentiate ourselves from other companies offering to perform similar testing, so we decided to take these principles and use them as our basis for evaluating products. We developed a complex algorithm for each principle. Then, using our 300,000 product portfolio, we tested relative greenness against each of the 12 principles, and from there produced an aggregated score from zero to 100, with zero being the best possible score, meaning the most green.”

As many chemists turn to greener options in the lab, they face the challenge of properly evaluating the “greenness” of a chemical or process. The 12 Principles of Green Chemistry— developed by Paul Anastas and John Warner—provide a global framework that helps scientists learn about green chemistry and how to design or improve materials, products, processes, and systems. These complementary principles focus on resource efficiency, energy efficiency, and risk minimization (e.g., human health and environmental), while targeting a life-cycle perspective (e.g., raw materials extraction, chemical production, and end-of-life bioaccumulation and biodegradation). While these principles lay a solid foundation, they are only conceptual and do not provide a quantitative framework for scoring green pro

The rapid growth and adoption of single-use technologies in the biopharmaceutical market is significantly increasing the amount of plastic waste being generated.

MilliporeSigma created a unique web-based greener alternative scoring matrix, also known as DOZN™a quantitative green chemistry evaluator based on the 12 principles of green chemistry. The 12 principles of green chemistry provide a framework for learning about green chemistry and designing or improving materials, products, processes and systems. The DOZN™evaluatorscores products based on metrics for each principle and aggregates the principle scores to derive a final aggregate score.

As a believer in the coexistence of science and the environment, the Glaunsinger Lab at the University of California-Berkeley takes a proactive approach to its efforts to recycle and reuse coolers needed for the storage and shipment of temperature-sensitive reagents, chemicals and kits.