Our commitment includes ensuring that we continue to integrate safety, health and environmental considerations into our product and packaging development; that we continue to focus on reducing the amount of waste we generate and our emissions to air and water; and that we effectively manage biodiversity, land and water use. 

Calculating our resource efficiency
There is no completely satisfactory measure that can be used to relate resource consumption to the size of a complex global business such as ours. In common with other similar companies and in line with the Global Reporting Initiative, we use waste generated and reported sales to calculate our resource efficiency. This is because reported sales is a transparent, audited number that enables comparison over time (but it should be noted that exchange rate fluctuations can have an effect on reported sales).

Outsourced manufacture
Third parties manufacture some key intermediates and products on our behalf. Since 2005 we have been working with over thirty of our outsourcing partners to measure the environmental impact of this manufacturing activity. The measures we have selected at this time are waste production and CO₂ emissions from energy use. This contribution from outsourced manufacture is not included in our SHE performance data currently.

We have determined that waste generated from outsourced manufacture is about 60% of that from our own activities (some 29,600 tonnes in 2007 compared with a total of 50,300 tonnes from our own manufacturing sites). Outsourced manufacturers recycled 70% of the hazardous waste and 51% of the non-hazardous waste quantities.

CO₂ emissions from energy used at third party premises to manufacture our products amounted to 71,400 tonnes in 2007, about 18% of that from our own manufacturing sites. This may be lower than the equivalent waste figure due to the fact that the energy consumption data from our suppliers relate only to our products, whereas the energy use and emissions figures from our own facilities are aggregated for all activities on the sites, not just manufacture. 23% of the electricity used in the manufacture was obtained from renewable resources.

Although we believe we have captured data for more than 80% of our established brands in outsourced manufacture, we are working to further improve the completeness, transparency and relevance of the data for future reports. The understanding we gain from this exercise will inform our efforts to continuously improve the environmental performance of the manufacturing activities performed on AstraZeneca’s behalf. The changes in the data presented in the table from 2005 to 2007 probably reflect the improvements we have already made in the data capture from our suppliers rather than any changing manufacturing patterns.

OUTSOURCED MANUFACTURE	2005	2006	2007
Number of purchased materials included in survey	60	61	64
Total purchased materials weight (metric tonnes)	629	646	803
Hazardous waste (metric tonnes)	8,700	11,600	14,400
Non-hazardous waste (metric tonnes)	9,660	7,520	15,200
Energy consumed (MWh)	82,400	86,300	221,000
Energy-related CO2 emissions (metric tonnes)	26,200	25,900	71,400

Supporting strategies
Strategies to support sustainable production include our 'SHE Triggers' model, which enables potential safety, health and environmental issues to be identified and designed out of our manufacturing processes for new active pharmaceutical ingredients at an early stage. This concept has now been extended to develop a model for use in development of secondary manufacturing processes and pharmaceutical products including environmental assessment of packaging and devices.

Our ‘Green Chemistry Network’ links environmental specialists with chemistry and engineering organisations within process development to help promote the principles of green chemistry and engineering. In 2007, all scientists in our Global Process Research and Development function (based in Europe) had the opportunity to attend training to raise awareness of how they can minimise environmental impact of the manufacturing processes they are developing. This included education on the tools that our Green Chemistry Network has devised. Some of these are described below.

Solvent Selection Guide This tool provides safety, health and environmental information to promote the selection of solvents with the minimum SHE impact when developing our processes.

Acid/Base, Alkylating Agent and Amide Formation Reagent Selection Guides These tools provide environmental information to promote careful consideration of environmental impact when reagents are chosen.

Substance Avoidance Database This tool lists all substances on relevant European, UK and Swedish environmental regulatory lists to highlight substances that should be avoided when developing manufacturing processes. For the most problematic substances, alternative choices are offered for the process development scientists. Coverage is continually updated.

Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) Removal Technology Selection Tool This tool aids selection of the most appropriate treatment technology for effluent streams containing APIs generated from manufacturing processes. One of our stated Pharmaceuticals in the Environment objectives is to pursue site-specific opportunities to minimise the amount of product lost to wastewater during our manufacturing activities.

During the course of developing our tools, any pre-competitive new environmental data that we feel the chemistry and engineering community should be alerted to will be published in the open literature.

Promoting Green Chemistry and Engineering
In addition to our internal efforts we are an active partner in the American Chemical Society Green Chemistry Institute Pharmaceutical Roundtable. This coalition between the ACS GCI and eight multi-national pharmaceutical corporations (at the end of 2007) has a mission to catalyse the implementation of green chemistry and engineering in the pharmaceutical industry globally. The group is active in process intensity benchmarking, the development of common green chemistry tools and funding academic research in the UK and USA. To date four collaborations looking to develop more sustainable chemistries in key research areas have been initiated.

Along with other members of the ACS GCIPR based in the UK our scientists contributed to delivering a Green Chemistry summer school for a group of undergraduate students in the summer of 2007. This event will be repeated in future years.

In order to further support young scientists and stimulate activity in the areas of green chemistry and engineering, our Global Process Research and Development function has introduced a system of AstraZeneca Green Chemistry and Engineering Grants. These grants are available to support attendance at conferences, symposia and related activities associated with university research projects. Post-graduate students engaged in a research degree program (MSc, PhD) at a fully accredited Chemistry or Chemical Engineering Department in the United Kingdom or Sweden are eligible to apply. In 2007 four grants were made to chemists and engineers undertaking post-graduate study.