Green pharma supply chain: a review of existing practices and future directions

Purpose
The pharmaceutical industry is facing significant pressure to tackle antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Other ecological, societal and regulatory pressures are also driving the industry to “go green”. While such a (green) transition could be possible through appropriate green practices’ implementation, the present understanding about it is superficial and vague. A key reason is the lack of green practices’-related studies on pharmaceuticals, which are also insufficiently comprehensive. This knowledge gap is sought to be addressed.

Design/methodology/approach
A systematic literature review (SLR) was conducted with 73 carefully selected articles, then subjected to thematic content analyses for synthesising the relevant themes and sub-themes.

Findings
Around 76 operational-level green practices covering all key stakeholders across the drug lifecycle were identified. It was revealed that designing drugs having accelerated environmental degradability is important to combat AMR. Also, redesigning existing drugs is environmentally more resource-intensive than developing new ones with significant cost-saving potential in solvent recycling and flexible manufacturing, both of which are not common at present. With regards to green-related barriers, stringent quality requirements on drugs (and therefore risks in making relevant green-oriented modifications) and time-consuming and costly regulatory approvals were found to be the key ones.

Practical implications
The operational green practices’ framework developed for individual pharmaceutical supply chain stakeholders could help practitioners in benchmarking, modifying and ultimately, adopting green practices. The findings could also assist policymakers in reframing existing regulations, such as Good Manufacturing Practices or GMP-related, to promote greener drug development.

Originality/value
This work is the first systematic attempt to identify and categorise operational-level green supply chain practices across stakeholders in the pharmaceutical sector.

Highlights
• Biodegradability of drugs is more important than environmental degradability.

• Flexible manufacturing process design (or quality by design) reduces resource wastage.

• Ecopharmacovigilance is effective in combating PIE and AMR-related issues.

• Upstream and downstream coordination is key to greening pharma operations.

• Costly and time-consuming regulatory approval is a key barrier to greening pharma processes.