Environmental considerations must be integrated into every stage of our product development, manufacturing, end-use and final disposal. We will encourage our suppliers to provide environmentally sound goods and services and we will assist our customers in achieving their environmental objectives.

Product development
In 1997, Enzyme Business implemented a new management system for the development of new products. All projects are managed by cross-organizational teams and project plans are based on a checklist, describing all elements to be considered throughout the project. The new project structure ensures that environmental aspects are taken into account at an early stage.

Before a project is approved, a preliminary assessment of the environmental aspects is made based on available information, and checkpoints for the re-evaluation of specific environmental issues are agreed upon and incorporated in the overall project plan. The project management system includes a structured collection of best practices, which are made available for other ongoing and future projects.

Life-cycle assessments

1995-97 target: Perform life-cycle assessments (LCAs) of a selected range of products in order to demonstrate and improve the environmental performance of these products and their applications.

During the last three years we have been actively engaged in life-cycle assessment work. In particular, we have developed a model which can be used for all enzyme products. The model, an environmental profile, covers the process from the acquisition of raw materials until the finished enzyme product is dispatched from our factory. This cradle-to-gate evaluation can be used to identify environmentally unsound raw materials and processes and may furthermore be used by customers wanting to perform LCAs of their products. The LCA approach places particular emphasis on the importance of environmental soundness throughout the supply chain and we shall ensure that environmental data is collected from our suppliers in future.

The life-cycle approach has also been used to determine the best disposal option in four European countries for our prefilled insulin syringe, NovoLet^®. The assessment showed that disposal as household waste is an environmentally sound alternative to recycling of plastic in countries where household waste is incinerated and the energy recovered.

New 1998-2000 target: Continue to assess the environmental impact of our products and processes.

Supply management
The purchasing of environmentally sound raw materials is an area that is receiving increased attention throughout Novo Nordisk. In our ongoing assessment of major suppliers of raw materials to Enzyme Business in Denmark, environmental issues now constitute 20% of the evaluation system used to rate our suppliers.

The first results of our supply management efforts have been very encouraging, leading to a number of improvements in our processes.

In Health Care we have incorporated environmental issues in relation to subcontractors into our quality system. Key subcontractors will be informed about our environmental policies and expectations, and environmental issues will be part of our future evaluation of subcontractor performance. In the long term environmental auditing will be an integral part of our quality agreements with our subcontractors.

New 1998 target: Health Care will screen its major raw materials in order to single out items that require further environmental assessment.

Accounting for the environment