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The healthcare sector is responsible for at least 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, making it a significant contributor to climate change. At the same time, it holds the potential to play a key role in mitigating global warming. Within the healthcare sector, the development, production, and use of medicines account for a substantial share of total emissions. A share that has increased significantly over the past decades.

Meanwhile, climate change and the associated extreme weather events are increasingly affecting access to essential medicines. Fortunately, there is growing awareness of the need to reduce the environmental footprint of pharmaceuticals, including emissions linked to both their production and consumption.

For this S4S Café we invited five speakers: 

Toine Pieters – Green pharmacy and its absence in historical perspective
The Meuse supplies drinking water to over six million people and now carries a wide mix of pharmaceuticals and pesticides. In Dutch waters, 93 percent of screened drugs were detected, with metformin showing the highest levels. Patterns reflect wastewater effluent and inputs at the Belgian border, with about half of total loads to the North Sea arising in the Dutch basin. The noPILLS project showed that solutions must span the entire medicinal product chain, combining technology with smarter prescribing, disposal, education, and stakeholder coordination. Prof. dr. Toine Pieters situates this challenge historically and points to a future where therapeutic benefit and ecological stewardship advance together.

Milad Sadreghaemy - Impact of climate change and pharmaceutical use, and possible ways to reduce this impact 
Milad Sadreghaemy (PhD student at Pharmaceutical Sciences) will present on the mismatch between standard medicine packaging and the personalized doses that some patient groups need. Using amoxicillin suspension—a widely prescribed antibiotic for children—as an example, he will show how the fixed vial sizes produced by the pharmaceutical industry often do not align with children’s personalized dosage. This mismatch results in large amounts of leftover medicine and unnecessary waste.

– Sustainable dispensing of medicine in public pharmacy
Carolien Muijs (Lecturer in Pharmacology – Research Coordinator at Hogeschool Utrecht) will present on the attitude of public pharmacists on sustainability and the barriers they encounter for sustainable dispensing of medicine. She will show examples how public pharmacies are currently incorporating sustainability in daily practice, and what - according to pharmacists- would help them to dispense more sustainably.

Maarten Lambert - Impact of climate change on access to medicines
Dr. Maarten Lambert (Post-doc researcher at Pharmaceutical Sciences) will present on environmental challenges to supply chains and building resilient supply chains. This presentation will discuss the impact of extreme weather events on availability of medication and responses to disruptions in the pharmaceutical supply chain.  

– 3D printing and sustainable production of medicines
Jan Dekker (Head of Manufacturing UMCU) will outline where the UMCU currently sees the most promising applications of 3D printing, the current state of development, and the main challenges in the field of 3D printing and the sustainable production of medicines.