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Product stewardship
Product responsibility through all levels
At Boehringer Ingelheim, product stewardship is an essential part of the product life cycle. In accordance with the Chemical industry’s Responsible Care® programme, the company endeavours to develop and manufacture safe products with reduced environmental impact.
Product stewardship at Boehringer Ingelheim integrates EHS aspects into the different stages of the product development, manufacturing and distribution process:
- Research & Development
- Manufacture
- Packaging
- Storage
- Distribution
Selected examples for our global product stewardship initiatives are:
Environmental risk assessments
We are not only responsible for clean production, but also for ensuring our products have minimal impact on the environment:
Drugs and their metabolic by-products enter the wastewater system in patients’ excretions and can thus reach surface water.
When registering new products, an environmental risk assessment is required. This is prepared on the basis of studies on environmental impact and ecotoxicological effects. Furthermore, we assess the environmental data for products already on the market and, where necessary, run further voluntary studies to assess the ultimate impact.
Assessments to date show that our substances present no risk to man; moreover, the concentrations detected are far too low to have any acute effect on aquatic organisms. With respect to potential long-term effects we are following ongoing research in this field while conducting our own studies on, for instance, chronic toxicity in aquatic organisms.
New Regulations: REACH and GHS
Our European sites are intensely working on the implementation of REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals), a cornerstone of the future EU chemicals policy. The objective of the regulation is to enhance safety of all those involved along the product chain and to protect both, consumers and the environment. In future, companies will only be permitted to use or market correspondingly registered products. We also started to prepare for UN's Globally Harmonised System for the Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS).
Phasing out ozone depleting propellants
Aerosols are important Boehringer Ingelheim products.
The Montreal Protocol and several supplementary, legally binding international agreements lay down the gradual elimination of all production and use of ozone-depleting substances, particularly chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that have been widely used as aerosol propellants.
Of particular relevance to Boehringer Ingelheim is the switch from CFC-driven metered dose inhalers to those propelled by the more environmentally-friendly hydrofluoroalkanes (HFAs). We have already launched HFA products for our established bronchodilators in many countries.
Boehringer Ingelheim has also given much attention to the development of an alternative inhaler device that is propellant-free. The result is the
Respimat® Soft Mist™ Inhaler, a highly innovative approach to inhaler technology that is designed to meet patients´ needs and is also environmentally friendly.
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