Australia’s largest pharmaceutical companies need to do more to reduce their carbon footprint

The pharmaceutical industry is vital to human health, but it also has a significant environmental impact.

It contributes up to 19 per cent of Australia’s healthcare sector’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which equates to around 1.5 per cent of Australia’s total emissions.

Climate change is a global crisis and all economic sectors, including healthcare, must urgently reduce their emissions.

To see if Big Pharma is doing its part, three of us (Burch, Brown, Winkel along with colleagues from the University of Melbourne) analysed the public commitments and actions of the ten largest pharmaceutical companies in Australia towards achieving net-zero GHG emissions.

That research and accompanying editorial by...