Sutstainability Summit Platinum Sponsor - Sharp Services

Contributed by: Hywel Woolf, Global Sustainability Lead

1. Sharp Services sponsored the Sustainability Summit at CPHI Milan – what motivated this decision, and how does it reflect your commitment to sustainability leadership in pharmaceutical services? What key messages did Sharp aim to communicate to the industry? 

"The key reason we sponsored the Sustainability Summit is that we firmly believe the most effective way to accelerate our progress on climate action is through collective action and partnership. We are here to engage, learn and hopefully inspire other supply chain organisations to share their challenges and to work with us to co-create solutions. No individual company will have all the answers and nothing meaningful will be achieved in isolation. We want to do what we can to encourage open conversations and build relationships across the supply chain. The climate crisis requires us to reimagine what strategic partnerships can deliver.

 What are Sharp's key sustainability targets, and what progress have you made towards achieving them since joining SBTi? Our main objectives revolve around our Science Based Targets. Working from on a relatively recent 2023 baseline, we aim to reduce Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 54.6% and Scope 3 emissions by 32.5% by 2033. We have made strong progress across Scope 1 and 2 emissions with an 11% and 24% reduction respectively. As these are our direct emissions, we can control the necessary operational and investment decisions that will improve our emissions profile and help us achieve our targets. However, Scope 3 is the more significant challenge for us, particularly Category 1, purchased goods and services. It is the nature of a contract service provider that – for most of our services – we cannot dictate the packaging materials specification, the design specification or the component suppliers for our clients’ products to achieve potential carbon savings. Those product-related decisions are by-in-large made by our pharma clients and our ability to progress to more sustainable solutions and reduce our Scope 3 impact can be more limited as a result."

2. Your sustainability reporting identifies that approximately 58% of Sharp's carbon footprint comes from Scope 3 Category 1 – purchased goods and services. How are you tackling this significant challenge? 

"Yes, Scope 3, Category1 is our biggest portion and our biggest challenge. Making progress on Scope 3 is multi-faceted and, as with everything, you can’t improve it if you don’t measure it so again, accurate data management is critical. As a contract packager, Sharp procures packaging materials on behalf of our clients, and we have discretion over some of the materials, components and suppliers we choose to purchase from. We like to work with suppliers who show a commitment to sustainability themselves and who are proactive about offering us innovative solutions, whether that’s carton, paperboard, foils, plastics etc that have a reduced carbon footprint, or improved recyclability or waste handling. It’s a priority for us to be able to bring those improved materials to the table for our pharma clients. 

We can’t control all of our purchasing directly however, and as I mentioned in our presentation with Rob Williams ‘Positive Pressure: how pharma and their suppliers can move the needle on emissions reduction’ approximately 80% of our Scope 3 Category 1 (purchased goods and services) is dictated by our clients. They tell us in their bill of materials what packaging materials they require for each product or SKU. To have a positive impact here, we try to engage early with clients and collaborate on suitable alternative materials and packaging. We see the whole area of eco-design as a real opportunity to add value where we can advise on new materials and secondary packaging redesigns that have the potential to reduce our Scope 3 emissions. Several years ago, we established a sustainability materials innovation group (SMIG) in-house at Sharp to focus on identifying and assessing new sustainable packaging solutions that are appropriate for pharma and that retain those critical-to-quality attributes that are essential for patient safety. Those criteria remain foundational even as we move towards adopting more sustainable primary and secondary packaging solutions."

3. You've implemented supply chain ESG risk software to assess supplier sustainability performance. How has this tool changed your supplier relationships and procurement decisions? 

"About 18 months ago Sharp’s procurement team introduced Integrity Next, – a risk and sustainability assessment platform – which all our suppliers are required to report into annually. We have a much more accurate picture now of how our suppliers are performing across a range of criteria and we can adjust procurement decisions accordingly. The platform has given us the data transparency we need at the product level to assess the impact of different materials on our Scope 3, as well as providing a free educational resource for our suppliers across the ever-changing emissions reporting and regulatory landscape. As new regulations come into play – such as PPWR, EUDR etc – we’re in a much stronger position to comply with the data requests from our clients to support them with their legal obligations. This makes Sharp a better partner to pharma and deepens our value-add on procurement design decisions."

4. How do you engage with pharmaceutical clients about more sustainable packaging options, and what has been their response? 

"The response has been increasingly positive, with growing demand for sustainable packaging solutions, product-level data, and eco-design support as sustainability and compliance are prioritised and become more integrated.

We encourage clients to talk to us early in their packaging design process so we can support them in their decisions on material and packaging to reduce environmental impact while maintaining the quality, safety, and regulatory standards required for pharmaceutical products. Consideration of emissions impact is now a key factor from day one when planning the packaging process for new product launches. The greater challenge is often when moving existing product SKUs to use new materials where change controls are required and materials need to be tested and validated for an existing packaging process. This requires close collaboration with clients to support testing and acceptance. An additional benefit to this is that validating a new packaging material is a great way to diversify supply and mitigate risk and our clients appreciate that.

Our Sustainability Materials Innovation Group (SMIG) who work alongside our Global Design Team add great value for clients by assessing the viability of new materials to ensure Sharp are proactive in offering better material options. Our procurement team are also very active with our supply network and are quick to leverage their materials expertise to understand emerging innovations and develop solutions that improve recyclability, reduce carbon footprint, and support future regulatory requirements."

5. You've conducted a start-to-finish carbon footprint analysis of a 1 ml injectable device. What were the key findings, and where did you identify the carbon "hotspots"? 

"Yes, we completed an in-depth analysis of the carbon ‘hotspots’ across the life cycle of the auto-injector device. This work was undertaken by the Alliance to Zero – of which Sharp is a member & co-founder – and was a valuable exercise for all Alliance company members. Some carbon hot spots identified we would have expected, but they had not been accurately quantified before. Equally, there were some surprises for Sharp. For example, we thought our contribution to the overall PCF for the autoinjector would likely be quite minimal, comparatively, because we are only accountable for the packaging service, not materials themselves. We were surprised to note our services contributed around a quarter of the overall product carbon footprint.  One of the carbon hotspots identified was attributed to work-in-progress (WIP) staging tray housing the injectable mid-process. Fortunately – unlike with primary, secondary and tertiary packaging for the product itself – making a change to our packaging process was within our control and could be implemented immediately. After an extensive testing process, we established that we could reuse the WIP tray up to 12 times, whilst retaining the same high-quality standards. Moving away from a single use item within the packaging process could save carbon and costs at the same time.

The Alliance to Zero has published their PCF guideline making it available for the pharma industry “A methodological guideline for the product carbon footprint (PCF) assessment of automated disposable injection devices” and it is available for download from the resources area of their website."

6. How has this detailed analysis informed your approach to reducing embedded carbon throughout the injectable device lifecycle? 

"The Alliance to Zero tends to focus its work on depth rather than breadth, which has allowed us to select very specific challenges that improve areas of the injectable value chain directly. Working with the Alliance, Sharp has been addressing the WIP tray hotspot opportunity to move from what was traditionally a single use item to a more circular approach. The trays used to be incinerated after a single use, and now they are being reused up to 12 times – while still maintaining the required level of quality and structural integrity. The project has not stopped there. Through working directly with Ypsomed and our supplier, we are now progressing the discussion on to a new item design to become inherently more sustainable."

7. Clinical trial supply chains are notoriously complex and global. What are the unique sustainability challenges in this area, and how is Sharp addressing them? 

"Clinical trial supply is particularly challenging from a sustainability perspective because they are usually global in nature, time-critical and unpredictable. Patient safety and continuity of supply must always come first, which can make traditional efficiency improvements more difficult to apply.

Some of the key challenges include small and frequent national and international shipments, which may include ‘direct-to-patient’ requirements. Temperature-controlled and temperature-critical transportation, specialist packaging, uncertain patient recruitment and product overage, which can often lead to higher emissions, increased material use and potentially unused or expired product.

We try to focus on reducing these impacts without compromising patient safety, product integrity or supply continuity. We work with sponsors to explore more sustainable packaging and supply solutions, engaging our suppliers to identify and develop innovative materials. A nice example is the logistics team at our Bethlehem PA facility who recently validated and launched a reusable cold chain shipper option for clients that offers multiple re-use potential.  It’s called the EcoFlex™ reusable cold-chain shipper from Cold Chain Technologies and a recent LCA report* from our partners cited 48% lower greenhouse-gas emissions and 60% lower fossil-fuel use when compared with single use shippers. We are beginning to see better options that can reduce the impact of clinical distribution, and our clinical team are doing what they can to encourage sponsors to choose these more sustainable options."

* CCT EcoFlex™ Family | Cold Chain Technologies

8. What are Sharp's sustainability priorities for the next 12–24 months? 

"We are firmly focused on moving from data baselining and assessment to action – that is implementing improvements. Across our USA, UK and EU facilities, we are using the energy assessments completed last year to develop costed decarbonisation roadmaps and investment plans, providing a clear pathway for future energy and carbon reduction projects.

Within Scope 3, our key focus is purchased goods and services, particularly packaging. We want to fully engage our supply chain to focus on bringing innovative materials and more sustainable packaging solutions to our clients to support them on the delivery of their carbon reduction strategies.

This approach supports two important objectives: reducing the carbon and environmental impact of packaging while helping clients prepare for an increasingly complex regulatory landscape, including PPWR and EUDR."

9. What were your key takeaways from participating in the CPHI Milan Sustainability Summit? 

"It was clear that sustainability was a golden thread of this year’s CPHI. Not just the summit, but the workshop stages, the spotlight stage and across show floors where many organisations were openly prioritising sustainability and sharing their disclosure scores and ratings. It was striking to see how many senior pharma leaders are involving themselves in the sustainability discussion, it’s no longer just the sustainability professionals, which is a positive sign of how seriously the industry is taking the looming SBTi deadlines. Time is extremely tight to enact the transformation required, but it does appear that most pharma companies and their supply chain partners have integrated sustainability into their core organisational strategies, not simply as an add-on. That recognition is critical to progress – either achieve your climate targets or risk becoming redundant.

The Informa team did a great job bringing the right people and conversations into focus at the Summit. There are always more opportunities to progress, and this year really has set things up to continue at pace and scale for next year."