MilliporeSigma's Fabien Thibault Named Sustainability Champion of the Year by Business Intelligence Group

Today, Fabien Thibault was named Sustainability Champion by the Business Intelligence Group in the 2021 Sustainability Awards program. Fabien is the global manager of product and packaging sustainability at the Life Science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, whose U.S. and Canada business operates as MilliporeSigma. The Sustainability Awards honor those people, teams and organizations who have made sustainability an integral part of their business practice or overall mission.

The Sustainability Champion of the Year award recognizes Fabien Thibault’s data-driven approach to drive sustainability improvement in the development of products and packaging.

In 2005, Fabien Thibault joined MilliporeSigma in the U.S. and Canada. Serving as a packaging engineer through 2015, he managed packaging development and the creation of user guides for new products in BioM Research & Development. In 2012, he began leading MilliporeSigma’s Design for Sustainability (DfS) efforts in BioM R&D, introducing an eco-design approach to packaging and product development.

Since moving to MilliporeSigma’s corporate responsibility group in 2015, Fabien has continued to manage the DfS program. Today, he helps project teams understand environmental hot spots, opportunities for improvement, customer demands and project objectives. At a company with a portfolio of more than 300,000 products, this is no small task. But thanks to Fabien, MilliporeSigma is successfully creating awareness of product packaging sustainability across all business areas.

One of Fabien’s most impactful contributions has been the development, implementation and management of the SMASH Packaging Plan—a four-year approach to improving packaging sustainability across the organization. Fabien’s role is to define and embed packaging sustainability standards and guidelines into the product development process. He also leads key initiatives with internal stakeholders to improve the sustainability of MilliporeSigm's product and distribution packaging across the organization.

Fabien has a master’s degree in packaging from Packaging Engineering School in Reims, France, and is trained on SimaPro—a lifecycle assessment software. He is a member of the Biopharma Sustainability Roundtable and treasurer of Acti’Jeunes—a nonprofit that manages after-school childcare centers and activities for teenagers.