Growing consumption, industrialisation and urbanisation threaten not only the sustainability of the environments in which we live, but also the health of people around the world.
Every year at Novo Nordisk we use billions of litres of water and significant amounts of energy and resources to manufacture medicines. We distribute hundreds of millions of products to people who need them – and demand for our life-saving treatments is growing. That puts us on the front line of some of the biggest issues: climate change, water and resource scarcity, pollution and plastic waste. We are well-known and committed to driving change to defeat diabetes and other serious chronic diseases, but to do that we also recognise our responsibility and commitment to creating a sustainable, healthy environment for the long-term.
Novo Nordisk has a bold and simple ambition: to have zero environmental impact. In order to achieve this, the company is embracing a circular mindset – designing and producing products so that they can be recovered and re-used, and reshaping business practises to eliminate waste by turning it into new resources.
Driving environmental improvement is a long-term task, and Novo Nordisk’s new environmental strategy, Circular for Zero, sets out the targets and milestones for the next chapter of this journey. We will implement circular approaches across our value chain by 2030. We’re aiming to hit zero carbon targets in our own operations and with key suppliers, eliminate wastage of energy, water and materials in the company, and take big strides towards reusability and recyclability through product innovation. We have previously focused on reducing carbon emissions in our operations. We have managed to achieve 100% renewable power in our production plants all over the World and are a founding member of ground-breaking circular partnerships in Denmark. However, today it’s no longer enough to focus on the environmental impact of our manufacturing processes, which is why we are thinking beyond that at Novo Nordisk. As such, in making and structuring our business decision, we design and produce our products so that they can be recovered and reused, minimise consumption across our value chains, i.e. eliminate waste – in other words, apply a ‘circular mindset’ to whatever we do.
By embedding a circular mindset, we want to unlock innovative ways to improve the company and, through that, our environmental footprint. And to meet the scale of this challenge we know we must collaborate deeply and widely with partners.
