Repackaging medicine

Plastic, especially polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, has been used for decades to safely package and deliver medicines around the world given its near-perfect qualities. But in view of its detrimental effect on the environment, Novartis is now thinking outside the box to find new ways of sustainably packaging medical treatments with the aim of reaching plastic neutrality by 2030.

Text by Goran Mijuk, photos by Nicolas Heitz

Saving carton through smaller packaging.

Published on 05/10/2020

When the discolored column of smoke that had been billowing from the chimney of an industrial incineration facility finally vanished, Brett Fulford knew he was on the right track – technically and professionally. It was the early 1990s. And Fulford, who worked for Rechem International at the time, had recently installed one of the very first wet electrostatic precipitators in the United Kingdom, a high-tech filter which allowed the plant operators to burn a toxic chemical without causing harm to the environment.

“I radioed over the walkie-talkie to the control center to switch on the precipitator,” Fulford says, recalling the moment more than 20 years ago. “The steamy plume, which could be seen for miles and miles around, suddenly disappeared. It was very satisfying that my own efforts helped getting rid of this toxic waste.”

Fulford, who had studied engineering technology at Leicester Polytechnic, also specialized in waste management and pollution control. “I fancied for a time to go into design and worked for a company in the sector, being very much attracted by product designers such as Philipp Stark,” Fulford says. “But eventually I moved to environmental studies, an industry which was extremely new and exciting and where I could put my engineering skills to the test.”

When he went on to study at the University of Manchester and at Loughborough University, Fulford was one of only a handful of engineers in the emerging field, which despite the growing environmentalist movement at the time had yet to make an impact in the industry. “We were just a few people,” Fulford recalls. “But this gave us a sense of being pioneers and the satisfaction of having a real impact.”

Plastic-neutral

This frontier spirit and the gratification of helping to clean the environment never left Fulford, who early on in his career moved to the pharmaceutical industry and, some three years ago, joined Novartis. Here, as Head of Environmental Projects, he oversees a series of large and small-scale projects designed to help the company become more sustainable.

One of the key projects he is leading is to make Novartis plastic-neutral by 2030, meaning that the weight of plastic packaging entering the environment for disposal is approximately the same as the weight being recovered for recycling.

As part of these efforts, he is also developing new approaches to get rid of polyvinyl chloride, known to all as PVC, one of the most-used materials in medical packaging, which until recently was hardly questioned by either patients or regulators given its ability to protect a drug.

Despite its known environmental impact, PVC is still widely used in the 900-billion-dollar global packaging market and is expected to grow over the next few years. Although the packaging market in medicine is small compared to other industries, PVC is also ubiquitous here due to its high adaptability and low cost.

“PVC has been used for such a long time that people have not challenged it until recently, if at all,” Fulford explains. “In many ways it is the most reliable and safe material to store and distribute medicines, especially if you think of worldwide distribution, where you ship drugs over long distances and in which the goods need to be packaged safely to protect against pressure and temperature, for example.”

Learn more about environmental action at Novartis here!

Secondary packaging

Given its strength and its ability to withstand harsh impacts and high temperatures, PVC is the cover of choice in primary packaging, the protective shield that covers the actual drug such as in a classic blister pack of pills.

While Novartis is working on novel ways to replace PVC in this domain, both regulatory and technical barriers are currently so high that most efforts are still conceptual. In secondary and tertiary packaging, however, things look rather different, as they do also when it comes to the design for packages of new drugs.

One of the most advanced efforts to replace PVC is led by Yves Steffen, Head of TRD Packaging & Device Commercialization, who is working to use new materials for secondary packaging for biologics, which is used to hold individual units together, e.g. within a box.

“Everything we do needs to be commercially sensible and must not, under any circumstances, affect patient safety,” Steffen, a mechanical engineer who has been working at Novartis for the past 16 years, explains the tricky road to replace a material that so far has been the uncontested industry favorite. “We try to find solutions that require little investment and provide our production division with the right incentive to embrace a new material.”

One early success story was the replacement of a PVC foil for newly launched biologics, which are often shipped in prefilled syringes. Rather than using PVC for the secondary cover that holds the product together in the box, the group looked for materials that can be recycled and have a limited impact on the environment.

“What we found was bio-thermoplastic based on renewable raw materials,” Steffen says. “On the one hand, we were able to reduce waste material and costs. On the other hand, because secondary packaging in biologics is not regulatory-relevant, we could simply exchange PVC with this new material very quickly.”

Given the efficiency with which the team was able to execute the project, Steffen and his colleagues now aim to get rid of all PVC in secondary packaging for biologic drugs. Meanwhile, Novartis, which has calculated that around 30 000 tons of plastic are associated with its products, is also working towards replacing PVC in ampoule trays and plastic bands for bottle caps as well as substituting pouches for bottles.

Getting rid of plastic in secondary packaging. Instead of using PVC to hold the syringe in the primary packaging, engineers designed a stable carton inlay.

Fully carton

Meanwhile, Steffen and his colleagues are seeking to broaden their scope and are discussing new ideas with suppliers to use recycled plastic or alternative materials for non-critical parts. They are also establishing design principles for new products, making them smaller, more attractive and easier to use. “For every new product, we have to look and ask ourselves whether we have found the most sustainable solution,” Steffen details.

One prototype they have been working on is to develop fully plastic-free packaging for a biologic drug. Instead of using PVC or even biodegradable plastic for the secondary material, the team has worked on a solution that consists of cardboard only. The drug device is fitted into a meticulously folded carton, which allows the product to be safely transported. This in turn reduces the tertiary packaging and the weight of the package itself.

Cemil Ertuerk, Packaging Design Manager in Basel, is proud of this achievement, as the packaging is not only helping to reduce the carbon and plastic footprint of Novartis but also shows that ingenuity and creativity can have a deep impact on costs. “Due to the changed size of the package, we can also make substantial gains in terms of storage and transportation, as we are able to put a larger number of products on a pallet for shipping,” Ertuerk says. “With the new packaging, we can put almost double the number of single packages on a pallet.”

Recycling

Another project which Novartis is looking at in more detail is to find ways to recycle plastic parts for a series of inhalers.

Working together with TerraCycle, a US volunteer-based recycling platform, Novartis aims to test whether patients would be willing to recycle parts of used inhalers. “This is a very new concept and we are only at the very early stages,” says Rahul Habibur, who runs the pilot project in Switzerland.

According to initial plans, Novartis is scheduling an awareness campaign in which participants can sign up on TerraCycle’s website to be part of the scheme. The US company would subsequently not only collect used plastic parts but also incentivize participants to win points and redeem them to support a charity. Other ideas also aim to include pharmacies as public collection locations.

“We’re still in the ideation phase, but we realized from the start that we want a broad range of inhalers to be part of the program in order to generate scale,” Habibur says. “If we can make the pilot work, it will certainly be a very promising start given the fact that there are many products in which plastic is still used in primary packaging. Being able to collect and recycle it would be a huge benefit for society.”

Culture change

While Steffen and his colleagues are upbeat about the prospects of making rapid progress, the complexity of changing well-established packaging principles makes it difficult, also for cultural reasons. “This is not only about having good ideas and being creative,” Steffen says. “To win over our internal and external partners, we must ensure that we have a strong business case in which we cannot only reach our environmental goals, but also help to make the company more efficient in economic terms.”

Fulford is also optimistic that momentum will pick up, but he is convinced that a broader shift change needs to take place. “If you were to go back 10 years, most people wouldn’t think there were any environmental concerns with respect to plastic. Now people are aware of the fact that these plastics are building up in the environment and the pressure is on companies to take action.”

While some environmental activists fear that there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish by the middle of the 21st century, concerns that micro plastic waste is entering the global food chain are real. “The message that action is needed has to become part of the DNA of our organization, as deeply ingrained as our willingness to develop breakthrough medicines. By trying to reduce plastic, we’re not only protecting the environment, we ultimately work towards generating trust with society. For a medical company, there is no higher value than that,” Fulford concludes.