Sustainability—
A Core Business

Large flags wave in state­ly fash­ion above the main entrance to Boehringer Ingel­heim in the west­ern Ger­man coun­ty of Mainz-Bin­gen, near the Rhine River and the vine­yards of Rhineland-Palati­nate and Hesse. They bear the logo of the world-famous com­pa­ny. The word “sus­tain­abil­i­ty” would be a fit­ting addition—because Boehringer Ingel­heim has devot­ed itself to this topic more than almost any other com­pa­ny in Ger­many. Impres­sive exam­ples illus­trate its com­mit­ment, like a new bio­mass heat­ing plant that will start up in Ingel­heim in late 2023 and sus­tain­ably sup­ply up to 80 per­cent of the town’s ener­gy needs with lower car­bon emis­sions. It will be pow­ered by wood waste unsuit­able for any other pur­pose. In the words of Lars Muraws­ki, Vice Pres­i­dent for Envi­ron­ment Health, Safe­ty, and Sus­tain­abil­i­ty, the project is a “quan­tum leap.”

The cafe­te­rias at the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny found­ed by Albert Boehringer back in 1885 stopped using dis­pos­able plas­tic uten­sils long ago. The meat they serve comes from ani­mals reared under species-appro­pri­ate con­di­tions. Boehringer Ingel­heim’s food ser­vices alone have cut their orig­i­nal emis­sion lev­els by 20 per­cent. For this they received not only “Germany’s best cafe­te­ria” hon­ors from the “Food & Health” ini­tia­tive but also their first “Green Can­teen” cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. And final­ly, the com­pa­ny stands out with its sus­tain­able prac­tices for con­fer­ences and meet­ings. Its “Green Meet­ings” approach begins with encour­ag­ing par­tic­i­pants to trav­el to events on pub­lic trans­porta­tion. It selects loca­tions that pri­or­i­tize ener­gy effi­cien­cy and care­ful use of mate­ri­als. For trade fairs and exhi­bi­tions it also thinks and acts in green ways, includ­ing con­struct­ing its stands with sus­tain­able mate­ri­als, avoid­ing sin­gle-use pack­ag­ing, and refrain­ing from offer­ing pro­mo­tion­al gifts.

Boehringer Ingel­heim is the first phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal cor­po­ra­tion to be rec­og­nized as a “cli­mate pro­tec­tion com­pa­ny” by Germany’s Fed­er­al Min­istry for the Envi­ron­ment. It has clear­ly earned this sta­tus, hav­ing worked for years to inte­grate sus­tain­abil­i­ty into all of its oper­a­tional lev­els. Exam­ples include con­tin­u­ous fur­ther devel­op­ment of ener­gy-effi­cient build­ing tech­nol­o­gy with sus­tain­able and intel­li­gent­ly con­trolled heat and air-con­di­tion­ing, the pro­duc­tion and sup­ply of green power, care­ful use of water, plans for a step-by-step con­ver­sion of its fleet to elec­tric vehi­cles, and intel­li­gent green logis­tics. The lat­ter is linked with ever more ambi­tious tar­gets to reduce the num­ber of kilo­me­ters tra­versed by the company’s suppliers.

The list of addi­tion­al activ­i­ties devot­ed to con­tin­u­ous­ly improv­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty is long, and invest­ments are on the order of a hun­dred mil­lion euros. One major pil­lar is the glob­al “More Green” pro­gram, which is Boehringer Ingelheim’s net­work for eco­log­i­cal sus­tain­abil­i­ty. “More Green” encom­pass­es a range of activ­i­ties designed to pro­tect the plan­et, its resources, and forms of life. Spe­cial pri­or­i­ties are placed on achiev­ing car­bon neu­tral­i­ty for com­pa­ny process­es by the year 2030, reduc­ing sup­ply chain emis­sions, improv­ing cir­cu­lar econ­o­my sys­tems, and reduc­ing water use foot­prints. These mea­sures apply to all of the company’s sites.

What’s impor­tant to note is that the “Sus­tain­able Development—For Gen­er­a­tions” pro­gram is by no means a belat­ed response to urgent calls for greater envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion and respon­si­bil­i­ty. Quite the con­trary: ever since it was found­ed in 1885, Boehringer Ingel­heim can show that its actions have con­sis­tent­ly been guid­ed by prin­ci­ples of sus­tain­abil­i­ty and resource preservation.

“We’re help­ing to make the world a bet­ter place for cur­rent and future gen­er­a­tions, and to cre­ate ideal con­di­tions for a healthy plan­et,” says Muraws­ki. That itself sounds like an ideal. But it’s more than that. The resolve is clear­ly present in the every­day rou­tines of the cor­po­ra­tion and its approx­i­mate­ly 53,000 employ­ees. “As a phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal research com­pa­ny we’re espe­cial­ly inter­est­ed in envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion and sus­tain­able action because there’s a direct con­nec­tion between our core busi­ness and cli­mate pro­tec­tion,” he notes. “You can only improve the health of peo­ple and ani­mals if you have a healthy environment—and a healthy plan­et in turn means health­i­er peo­ple and animals.”

In addi­tion to the company’s own sources of moti­va­tion, the need to ensure com­pli­ance with ever stricter reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments also dri­ves the work of Boehringer Ingelheim’s more than 350 EHS (envi­ron­ment, health, safe­ty) staff mem­bers. As gov­ern­ments and inter­na­tion­al insti­tu­tions sharp­en their focus on sus­tain­abil­i­ty, ever more laws and reg­u­la­tions are intro­duced, along with report­ing require­ments. Taxes and fees in the sec­tor are expect­ed to rise fur­ther over the com­ing years. There could also be stronger restric­tions on prod­uct appli­ca­tions. “We’re always try­ing to stay out in front of the curve,” says Muraws­ki in describ­ing the company’s efforts to act as early as pos­si­ble as well as inde­pen­dent­ly of gov­ern­ment directives.

Dr. Tim Derey­maek­er, Asso­ciate Part­ner ESG & Sus­tain­abil­i­ty at Porsche Con­sult­ing, applauds this approach. “Boehringer Ingel­heim is set­ting a strong exam­ple. Every com­pa­ny should be min­i­miz­ing the risks asso­ci­at­ed with stricter EHS require­ments in order to gen­er­ate sus­tain­able value for them­selves, soci­ety, and the environment—and to reduce future costs. Sus­tain­abil­i­ty has become a key chal­lenge in every indus­try, in terms of both strat­e­gy and oper­a­tions. If com­pa­nies don’t act sus­tain­ably soon­er or later, I’m afraid they won’t be able to survive.”

This is clear to Boehringer Ingel­heim. “Sus­tain­abil­i­ty is part of our cor­po­rate cul­ture,” says Muraws­ki. “We want to min­i­mize our impact as much as pos­si­ble. That means not only in devel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion, but also in the every­day oper­a­tions at all of our sites.” He and his team, which includes Annette Eckes, Senior Man­ag­er Cir­cu­lar Econ­o­my at cor­po­rate head­quar­ters, and Ingo Weiss, Head of Glob­al Envi­ron­ment & Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Man­age­ment, are eager to sup­port the mis­sion and “bring our ideas to life.” One fac­tor in suc­cess lies in not just pro­mot­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty from the top down but also sup­port­ing it from the bot­tom up. “Our employ­ees at all the sites can and should con­tribute their ideas and ener­gy to new devel­op­ments. For that we need con­sis­ten­cy and trans­paren­cy, which is our respon­si­bil­i­ty in Ingel­heim as the head­quar­ters of our glob­al EHS net­work.” And that works. As Muraws­ki sums it up, “It’s amaz­ing how much power comes from our employees.”