Integration of sustainability in all value chains by 2030

A unique approach to holis­ti­cal­ly inte­grate sus­tain­abil­i­ty into Life Sci­ence prod­ucts, sys­tems and ser­vices: Mer­ck, a lead­ing sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny, has launched an enhanced Design for Sus­tain­abil­i­ty (DfS) frame­work. With the intro­duc­tion of DfS, Mer­ck leads the life sci­ence indus­try in ensur­ing that sus­tain­abil­i­ty is at the fore­front of each stage of the prod­uct life cycle. This impor­tant strate­gic ini­tia­tive sup­ports the company’s com­mit­ment to inte­grate sus­tain­abil­i­ty into all val­ue chains by 2030, as out­lined in its sus­tain­abil­i­ty strategy.
“This approach has had a pos­i­tive impact on Merck’s busi­ness inter­nal­ly, and now it also will ben­e­fit our cus­tomers across acad­e­mia, phar­ma and indus­try — help­ing them make more informed deci­sions and sur­pass their own sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals,” said Chris Ross, inter­im busi­ness sec­tor head, Life Sci­ence, at Mer­ck. “Using this frame­work, Mer­ck will offer a deep­er lev­el of data-dri­ven insight to help guide cus­tomer con­ver­sa­tions around green­er, more sus­tain­able alternatives.”
The frame­work com­pris­es three parts — Devel­op­ment, Con­sult­ing and Re-engi­neer­ing — in which Mer­ck iden­ti­fies the sources of envi­ron­men­tal impacts, defines rel­e­vant tar­gets and mea­sures prod­uct sus­tain­abil­i­ty characteristics.

Development

In the Devel­op­ment process, Mer­ck coor­di­nates efforts with its cus­tomers and inter­nal researchers to pro­vide more sus­tain­able solu­tions in their appli­ca­tions. These stan­dards guide the research and prod­uct devel­op­ment process­es by intro­duc­ing green­er prod­ucts from the out­set. One exam­ple is Merck’s Ster­icup^®E and Ster­i­top^®E ster­ile fil­ters, which sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce the amount of plas­tic and pack­ag­ing that enters the lab­o­ra­to­ry and waste stream.
Launched as an inter­nal pro­gram in 2014, the DfS-Devel­op­ment frame­work was revamped in 2020 to include new cat­e­gories and sus­tain­abil­i­ty mea­sures that allowed Mer­ck to bet­ter assess prod­ucts and share sus­tain­abil­i­ty fea­tures with cus­tomers. The frame­work con­sists of 23 sus­tain­abil­i­ty aspects grouped into sev­en cat­e­gories cov­er­ing the major areas of envi­ron­men­tal and human impacts: Mate­ri­als; Sup­pli­ers & Man­u­fac­tur­ing; Ener­gy & Emis­sions; Water; Pack­ag­ing; Usabil­i­ty & Inno­va­tion; and Cir­cu­lar Economy.

Consulting

In the Con­sult­ing stage, Mer­ck col­lab­o­rates with cus­tomers in indus­tries rang­ing from agri­cul­ture to house­hold prod­ucts man­u­fac­tur­ing on ways to apply green chem­istry designs to their research and oper­a­tional approach­es. For exam­ple, Mer­ck is work­ing with a tech­nol­o­gy part­ner in the leather tan­ning indus­try to intro­duce a safer alter­na­tive to one ingre­di­ent. This alter­na­tive prod­uct will improve both sus­tain­abil­i­ty and safe­ty, while also yield­ing high qual­i­ty leather.

Re-engineering:

 In the Re-engi­neer­ing stage, Mer­ck uses the pro­pri­etary DOZN™ green chem­istry tool. This indus­try-first tool employs the 12 Prin­ci­ples of Green Chem­istry to com­pare the green­ness of sim­i­lar chem­i­cals, syn­thet­ic routes and chem­i­cal process­es. With the DOZN™ tool, researchers can iden­ti­fy piv­ot-points to imple­ment and quan­ti­fy sig­nif­i­cant sus­tain­abil­i­ty mea­sures, such as improv­ing resource use, increas­ing ener­gy effi­cien­cy and min­i­miz­ing human and envi­ron­men­tal hazards.
The DfS pro­gram is a cor­ner­stone of Merck’s com­mit­ment to deliv­er­ing sus­tain­able busi­ness prac­tices through­out the life­cy­cle of its Life Sci­ence prod­ucts. This unpar­al­leled approach allows the com­pa­ny to offer new prod­ucts with small­er envi­ron­men­tal foot­prints, while help­ing cus­tomers exceed their own sus­tain­abil­i­ty tar­gets in key areas such as ener­gy, waste and water.