Scaling pharma sustainability takes more than harmonized data

Pharmaceutical companies are under growing pressure to prove and report environmental credibility. When SimaPro’s Marina Dumont and SHL’s Marco Longhin sat down to unpack what that means in practice, one thing stood out: harmonized methods matter, but impact only happens when environmental data shapes everyday decisions. 

Read below or watch our webinar recording to learn how pharmaceutical and medical companies can scale sustainability from both technical and organizational perspectives. 

Environmental data is becoming part of market access

Sustainability in the pharmaceutical and medical sectors is moving from ambition to operational requirement. Companies are no longer only asked whether they measure environmental impact. They are increasingly asked how they measure it, whether the method is credible, and how results can support decisions across products, portfolios, and supply chains.

Market signals are already clear. The NHS Net Zero Supplier Roadmap introduces product-level carbon footprinting requirements from April 2028 for products supplied to the NHS. In France, a public methodology now supports calculation of the carbon footprint of marketed medicines across the full life cycle.

As Marina Dumont put it: “The timeline might be unclear, but the destination and the direction are set.”

Environmental data is no longer only a reporting input for pharma companies. It is becoming part of procurement readiness, customer response, investor confidence, and long-term product strategy.

 An overview of regulations and initiatives with direct or indirect impact on the pharma industry

Pharma now has a harmonized foundation

BSI’s PAS 2090 standard gives the sector a common methodological basis for environmental LCAs of pharmaceutical products. It specifies product category rules for conducting and reporting environmental LCA results, and it covers pharmaceutical products intended for human use, including the drug substance, formulation, device if applicable, packaging, distribution, patient use, and end of product life.

That matters because, before harmonized guidance, pharmaceutical LCAs could differ widely in boundaries, assumptions, allocation approaches, data quality, and reporting. PAS 2090 helps create a shared language.

But a shared language is not the same as full alignment across the value chain. Suppliers, license holders, procurement bodies, healthcare providers, and patients all face different challenges. An upstream supplier may need to provide PAS 2090-aligned input data. A license holder may need to apply the standard across an entire portfolio. A procurement body may need comparable, decision-ready results.

This is where Marina Dumont drew an important distinction: “Sectoral thinking lays the foundations, but supply chain thinking drives adoption and impact.”

From one-off studies to scalable capability

A single LCA can answer one question. A scalable LCA system can answer many.

The pharma industry needs are moving toward reusable models, consistent assumptions, clear documentation, and flexible outputs. This makes it possible to respond to different frameworks and customer requests without rebuilding the work every time.

A practical starting point is to map three things:

1. Where you sit in the value chain.
2. Which external drivers apply to your products and markets.
3. Which internal decisions the LCA system needs to support.

From there, companies can decide which methodologies matter, where they align, and where they differ. PAS 2090 may be one foundation. Other frameworks, such as Product Environmental Footprint (PEF), Together for Sustainability (TfS), BioPhorum guidance, or national procurement methods, may also become relevant depending on the product and market.

This is where SimaPro’s Pharmaceutical Product Compliance Pack – PAS 2090 can support a more structured start. Designed to reduce blank-canvas work and build consistency across products and batches, it provides a configurable LCA model aligned with PAS 2090, predefined system boundaries, datasets linked to ecoinvent, and documentation explaining the model structure.

Build for 2030, not only for the next request

The live session made one point clear: companies that build only for today’s requirement risk rebuilding again tomorrow.

A more resilient approach starts with a central LCA capability that can adapt as methods, procurement criteria, and reporting needs evolve. That capability should support:

• Consistent data foundations across studies, products, and disclosures.
• Methodological flexibility as requirements change.
• Faster responses when procurement bodies, customers, or regulators ask for data.
• Better supplier engagement, because harmonized data does not move through the value chain on its own.

This is especially relevant for Scope 3 emissions and pharmaceutical supply chains, where raw materials, active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), packaging, contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMOs), and logistics all affect the final footprint.

For larger organizations, solutions like SimaPro Enterprise help embed science-based LCA into systems and workflows across products, portfolios, and regions. This kind of infrastructure can help move LCA from static reporting to repeatable decision support.

The organizational barrier is often not the tool

Marco Longhin brought a complementary perspective from SHL Medical, a company developing drug delivery systems such as auto-injectors and pen injectors. His message was straightforward: LCA and eco-design do not succeed just because the method is sound, they succeed when people see why sustainability matters to their own decisions. 

“In pharma, we are constantly taking long-term bets using short-term incentives,” Marco said. That tension is familiar across the sector: pharmaceutical products may stay on the market for 10 to 15 years, while teams often work toward quarterly or annual targets. If sustainability is framed only as an extra requirement, it competes with speed, cost, and certainty. If it is framed as a way to reduce future risk, protect market access, improve product design, or avoid costly redesigns after regulatory approval, it becomes more relevant.

Better questions lead to better design

Marco shared examples from SHL Medical where reframing the question changed the outcome.

1. For their Quanta multi-fixed-dose pen injector, the team did not only ask how to reduce the impact of an existing single-dose model. They asked what could happen if fewer devices delivered the same treatment need. The resulting device can deliver four doses with the same injector, reducing device material per injection while balancing usability, business goals, and circularity.
2. In another example, a carrying case for an injector moved from six components to two, and from multiple polymers and springs to a mono-material solution. The result was easier to produce, easier to recycle, and clearer for the patient.

The lesson is not that sustainability automatically improves every design. It is that a better frame helps teams ask better questions before technical choices are locked in.

Supplier data needs time, trust, and timing

Data collection remains one of the hardest tasks of pharmaceutical LCA. The data needed for a credible study rarely sits in one function. Some of it sits with operations, some sits with suppliers. Other data may be incomplete, confidential, or not yet available in the format needed.

Both speakers pointed to the same practical answer: engage early. Supplier conversations are easier when they are not rushed by a single customer request. Contract renewal, long-term collaboration, and shared technical support can create better conditions for data exchange. In some cases, suppliers may also need methodological guidance before they can provide useful data.

That makes supplier engagement both a technical and organizational task. Companies need data templates, clear requirements, and consistent methods. They also need relationships that make data sharing possible.

What pharma companies can do next

The next stage of pharma sustainability will not be defined by measurement alone. It will be defined by the ability to use credible data at scale to inform business decisions.

PAS 2090 helps create a common foundation. SimaPro solutions, including the Pharmaceutical Product Compliance Pack – PAS 2090, can help teams turn that foundation into repeatable modeling work. But impact depends on what happens next: how results are interpreted, how teams use them, and how decisions change across product development, procurement, operations, and leadership.

Start with the method. Build the system. Then bring the organization with you. 

Watch the full pharma webinar recording, or talk to our team about how to get started.