Every operator in the manufacturing industry has environmental impacts. It is therefore important for companies like Orion who want to act on a sustainable manner to understand and know the sources and extent of their environmental impacts.
Orion’s environmental responsibility covers the entire value chain, regardless of where raw materials and products are manufactured. We have set ambitious requirements for managing our environmental impacts throughout the value chain. We ensure that we meet these requirements through training, systematic operational improvement and the continuous monitoring of our progress, for example. We also actively engage in dialogue with our suppliers to support them in strengthening their environmental responsibility.
Life cycle thinking provides a holistic understanding
Life cycle thinking is a particularly important tool and mindset that helps us improve our environmental management. It provides us with a comprehensive understanding of our impacts throughout the value chain – even after the products have left our factories and reach consumers.
Life cycle thinking starts at product development. At Orion, we carry out an environmental risk assessment for all active pharmaceutical ingredients. We examine their potential harmful impacts on nature. We also carry out environmental risk assessments in production, so that we can minimise these risks and their impacts in our own operations.
For two of our product families, we have also carried out a life cycle assessment (LCA). This is a product-level tool that helps us identify and better understand the environmental impacts of a product: Which part of its life cycle has the most significant environmental impacts? Where can we create the greatest positive impacts?
For example, through life cycle analysis, we have identified that most of the environmental impacts of our Easyhaler® product family arise from the product supply chain. This has made us realise the importance of cooperation with partners and suppliers even more clearly than before. We use the results of the calculations when we are seeking ways together to further reduce the environmental impacts of the supply chain.
Cooperation within the value chain makes it possible to reduce environmental impacts throughout the value chain
We follow the principle of continuous improvement in our environmental management and energy efficiency practices. This also applies to life cycle thinking, which enables us to identify the most effective and easiest ways to improve our environmental work.
We have seeked ways to integrate this holistic way of thinking in all decision-making at Orion, so that we take all the company’s operations into account. Environmental impact management at Orion focuses not only on the environmental impacts of our own operations and manufacture of products, but also on the impacts arising from the use and disposal of a product, for example. Cooperation is key in reducing the emissions of our value chain: only through cooperation with our partners can we achieve our ambitious environmental goals.
