Sustainability and sustainable development in pharma industry

Prasad Jaladi, Founder and Chief Facilitator, and Mahmood Sabahi, Sustainable Chemistry expert , Suraksha, point out that leading chemical and pharma companies or company associations have established sustainability programs to assess their products and manufacturing processes but it is also essential to create an agile, flexible workforce that thinks ‘systems and sustainability’

Mahmood Sabahi

It has been predicted that we will need enough water, food and energy to sustain a population as high as 9.8 billion by 2050 and 11.2 billion by the turn of the century. The key to meeting these challenges will be continued advances in chemistry, chemical engineering, and materials science and engineering. Their products are ubiquitous in our daily lives – from pharma and biomedical technologies to electronics, and communications to transportation and infrastructure. As discoveries continue to be made and technologies advance, how do we ensure the health and well-being of our people and the planet for generations to come?

Prasad Jaladi

Increasingly, the grand challenges identified in the 2016 United Nations report are driving new research initiatives. Reports such as that recently released from the 2016 NSF Workshop related to polymer science and engineering discuss those challenges within the context of a somewhat more focused discipline. Note one of the grand challenges identified in that report: “Achieve accessible, scalable polymers that match or exceed the property matrix of existing materials, yet have a green life-cycle.” The authors go further to point out the importance of life-cycle thinking.