EMD Millipore: Product sustainability studies and tools help developers design for the future

EMD Millipore, the life sciences division of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, provides the biopharmaceutical industry with products used in the creation of the life-saving drugs and treatments we’ve all come to depend on. Building products in this environment requires EMD Millipore to meet exacting quality standards. The company applies the same technical rigor to its corporate responsibility programs, especially in its drive toward sustainable products.

Product Investigation

Johanna C. Jobin, Former Director of Corporate Responsibility at EMD Millipore, first partnered with Pure Strategies in 2009 to deepen her understanding of the division’s product-related environmental impacts. She explains, “We engaged Pure Strategies to conduct LCA studies of some of our key single-use products to help us understand the environmental impacts of disposables used in biopharmaceutical manufacturing. The results have helped to shape our Design for Sustainability program to drive improved sustainable product and packaging design across our business units. The Pure Strategies team brought technical depth and experience to ensuring credibility and transparency in our efforts.”

These LCAs helped lay the groundwork for developing a comprehensive Design for Sustainability program that includes product criteria that guide designers to incorporate key sustainability principles into new product development.

Designing for the Future

EMD Millipore is beginning to integrate the product sustainability tools Pure Strategies has helped to create. While initial efforts targeted product design, new initiatives also focus on end-of-life management and packaging. EMD Millipore has pioneered an industry-leading product recycling program for single-use products used in biopharmaceutical manufacturing. Pure Strategies performed LCA studies that determined the environmental benefits of this program and developed a carbon calculator to quantify the greenhouse gas emission reductions for the company's customers.

Bringing EMD Millipore’s efforts full circle, the division has included design-for-disassembly criteria into their product design process to ensure further success of their product recycling efforts.