Comparison of environmental sustainability of pharmaceutical packaging
Summary Pharmaceutical companies are increasingly imparting a lot of importance on becoming more sustainable by developing medicines that are having same medicinal value but with reduced environmental impact. Type of packaging of tablets affects the emission generated during packaging of medicines. Selection of an appropriate packaging of medicine also influences the emission added to the environment. This paper aims at the comparison of environmental impacts of two different types of packaging of tablets viz. PVC blister and aluminium blister packaging. Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is used for this comparison. The study includes stages from Cradle to Gate that is, extraction till the packaging processes focused mainly on manufacturing. The functional unit is taken as material required for packing 1 lakh (100,000) 500 mg of paracetamol tablets. Primary data is provided by a pharmaceutical formulation industry and secondary data is obtained from a commercial LCA database available in GaBi and from literature. LCA software GaBi 7.0 is used to carry out the life cycle assessment of both kinds of packaging. Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) method, CML 2001, is used in this study. The study indicates that the PVC blister packaging performs better compared to the aluminium blister packaging in most of the impact categories considered. It is observed that the process of manufacturing of aluminium foils is a significant contributor to the overall environmental impact of aluminium blister packaging.