Case study
Leading by example on sustainability
Silvia Forroova , Informa Markets director – partnerships and sustainability for CPHI Barcelona , explains how the show aims to be a catalyst for sustainability within pharma
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I leading global community for pharmaceutical professionals , CPHI , has experienced remarkable growth in recent years , both in terms of visitor numbers and market expansion . It has reached new markets in Asia , Europe , North America , and is preparing for a launch in the Middle East .
One area that CPHI is particularly passionate about is sustainability . Of course , the pharma industry faces significant challenges and is not inherently sustainable . It is a complex issue that requires honest conversations and impactful measures .
Exhibitions , venues and event organisers in the last few years have , rightly , become increasingly focussed on how we can still deliver world-class services and events for customers , but at the same time , reduce the impact we have on the places we visit and our overall environmental footprint . For a large-scale international event like CPHI Barcelona , this takes on even greater focus . Last year , over half of our attendees travelled by air , so it becomes more important than ever to help them make every mile count productively .
One of the best ways to ensure our events are having a positive carbon impact is , of course , to ensure they deliver value to the industries we serve , for example by reducing the number of meetings they may have to take throughout the year . Already , with such an international industry and supply chain as pharma , we are hopefully positively contributing as there is nowhere else in the world that so many contacts can meet simultaneously . In fact , over a third of attendees last year told us attending CPHI meant they took fewer flights throughout the year .
For the journey Making your events deliver value is a crucial aspect as we begin to look at sustainability , and too often overlooked . But we are also looking to the direct reductions on site we can make , and this is where our recent journey really begins .
The first step was to identify ‘ low hanging fruit ’ that would be easier to address and what we might need to work towards for our longer-term objectives , as part of our strategic roadmap for the portfolio . We looked at other events we admired and tried to take on the learnings from their best practices – there are plenty of lessons to take from our peers and beyond . And finally , we spoke with our exhibitors and attendees to see what is important to them and how we can help them reduce their impact .
For context , CPHI Barcelona is the world ’ s largest pharma event , and our exhibitors are the supply chain partners making the ingredients , the finished drugs , the packaging and machinery of many of the medicines saving lives globally . Pharma is inherently a socially responsible industry thanks to the lives it saves .
What is often not well understood outside the sector is that , unfortunately , the manufacturing and development of these muchneeded drugs does often come at some environmental cost – chiefly because of the way drugs are approved [ as quickly as is possible meaning production methods are not always optimised ]. In fact , pharma is one of the most polluting industries globally and has a larger carbon footprint than even the automotive industry . A complex supply chain and strict regulations have historically meant a significant environmental footprint , however , in the last decade the industry has embarked on a massive global drive to try and improve .
In areas like pharma packaging we already see tremendous improvements – particularly in Europe , where we have been pleased to see our event , Pharmapack , is widely acknowledged to have been instrumental in accelerating this change .
Which brings me full circle back to CPHI Barcelona and how we can piece together this complex web and make the biggest positive contribution we can . We have been taking great strides to make the event as sustainable and carbon neutral as possible , but we are not content to pause here . For our team sustainability is very much a continual improvement philosophy and we are following the examples of Pharmapack and helping be a key facilitator of global change within the pharma industry itself .
Split focus We have split our focus . Many of our sustainability efforts are centred around activities to improve the
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