Conserving water

Water withdrawal

We set our goal to reduce our water withdrawal by 20% by 2030, compared with our 2015 base year. Given that our research and development pipeline includes several molecules which involve water-intensive production processes, this is extremely ambitious.

This challenging water reduction target is supported by various stakeholders within the company to integrate the environmental impact in the decision-making process and minimize future water consumption from the development of our bioproducts to the design of all new buildings and projects.

This process is combined with Green building certification (BREEAM or LEED depending on geography). For example, for the construction of our new biologics Plant in Belgium, our environmental projections have been validated by the Walloon region, proving its green 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 3 logical successive steps:

Monitoring
A good knowledge and understanding of water consumption are needed to identify the relevant actions and the most profitable environmental projects. It also 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 consumption. This is done by replacing existing equipment, processes and behaviors with more ecofriendly equivalents. 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 water consumption and is therefore monitored at each level of activities to make sure the most relevant option is selected.

Recycling
Our recycling strategy has been developed in 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).

Water quality

We acknowledge that reducing the quantity of water used is not the only challenge. We also aim at preventing pollution to safeguard water quality. 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.