Conserving water

We aim at conserving water

Water withdrawal

We set our goal to reduce our water withdrawal by 15% in absolute value by 2030, compared with our 2019 base year.

Our research and development pipeline includes large molecules requiring water-intensive production processes. Our goal is therefore extremely ambitious and drives us to innovate to decouple growth from increased water demand, especially in high water stress areas.

This is why we strive to integrate the environmental impact in the decision-making process and minimize future water withdrawal needs, from the development of our bioproducts to the design of all new buildings and projects. In fact, this process is combined with environmental building certification (BREEAM or LEED). For example, for the construction of our new biologics plant in Belgium, our environmental projections have been validated by the Walloon region, proving its increased efficiency (21% lower CO2e & -22% water consumption compared to average bio plant).

In parallel with our ‘green-by-design’ approach, UCB’s main manufacturing sites created a long-term plan to decrease their water consumption.

Our water management program follows three successive steps:

Monitoring
A good knowledge and understanding of water withdrawal are needed to identify the relevant actions and the most profitable environmental projects. It allows to track our consumption, detect any deviations, and fix them thanks to root cause analysis.

Reducing
Most of the environmental projects and initiatives aim to reduce water withdrawal. This is done by optimizing or replacing existing equipment, processes and behaviors with more sustainable equivalents. For example, we calculate the water Process Mass Intensity (water PMI) of all our biologic molecules, aiming to a water PMI reduction target of -20% compared to the current average.

We have also launched a program to make our cleaning processes more efficient, as they significantly contribute to our water footprint. Finally, the water type (purified, water for injection,…) also has a significant impact on the amount of water usage and is therefore monitored at each level of activities to make sure the most relevant option is selected.

Reusing and recycling
We act on three areas: the use of collected rainwater, the re-use of water for other activities that do not require the same level of quality and the recycling of sewage water with additional treatments (looking at zero liquid discharge factory).

At our two main manufacturing sites (Braine-l’Alleud, Belgium and Bulle, Switzerland) we are working towards having Ekopak water recycling installations. Those high-quality filtration stations using innovative technologies will allow us to reuse a large amount of our wastewater after it has been purified. This is one of our major projects to further work on reducing our water withdrawal.

Water quality

We acknowledge that reducing the quantity of water used is not the only challenge.

We also ensure effective wastewater treatment and extend these principles to our strategic suppliers to minimize impacts on aquatic ecosystems.

Additionally, we aim at preventing pollution to safeguard water quality, minimizing environmental risks and impacts throughout our medicines' lifecycle – from our suppliers, through the manufacturing of our medicines, to patient excretion and the disposal of unused medicines.

If you want to know more, find here our Pharmaceutical in the Environment disclosure.

Want to know where we are regarding our Waste and Water targets: Please check our last data here.