Go Green at Bristol-Myers Squibb
When it comes to environmental stewardship, Bristol-Myers Squibb
is a leader among publicly traded companies.
The company’s transformation to a next-generation BioPharma leader includes a stronger alignment with green and sustainable business practices, which is one of the reasons why Bristol-Myers Squibb earned the number one ranking on the 2009 “Best Corporate Citizens” list, which is compiled annually by The Corporate Responsibility Officer CRO Magazine.
CRO looked at the largest publicly traded companies in the U.S. to determine the top leaders in seven categories: environment, climate change, human rights, philanthropy, employee relations, finance and governance. The magazine cited Bristol-Myers Squibb for making “strides in changing its environmental impact on the world, including improving its carbon footprint by surpassing its target of a 10 percent decrease in greenhouse gas emissions by 2010 and creating a U.S. Green Building Council-certified biologics facility.”
Susan Voigt, Bristol-Myers Squibb’s vice president for Environment, Health and Safety, says: “We are driving environmental sustainability further into our company’s daily processes and into every business decision across our many functional areas.”
About 10 years ago, Bristol-Myers Squibb conducted a company-wide environmental impact analysis. “We have followed up with targeted initiatives worldwide to reduce: energy and water consumption, wastewater, non-hazardous waste, offsite hazardous waste disposal and air emissions of greenhouse gases, acid gasses and other chemicals,” Voigt says.
A few examples of Go Green innovations at Bristol-Myers Squibb include:
Promoting Green Chemistry
We remain committed to minimizing the use of chemicals of concern. Our Green Chemistry program includes a process that is solvent free so that our scientists do not have to handle and dispose of highly regulated solvent wastes. Green Chemistry reviews are conducted on products in development to identify opportunities to substitute less hazardous materials, and thereby beneficially impact employee safety, production costs and the environment.
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A Greener Fleet Improves Fuel Economy
Our fleet operations are working to reduce fossil fuel consumption in a variety of ways, such as using more hybrid and higher mileage vehicles. In the United States, our goal for transportation includes a 10 percent increase in fuel economy from 2004 to 2010 for the fleet. In Germany, we are using alternatives to gasoline to fuel vehicles, optimizing engines, installing energy saving tires and conducting environmentally friendly driver training to reduce fossil fuel use. In Plainsboro, New Jersey, we encourage employees to drive hybrid vehicles by offering drivers prime parking spots.
Trying-Out Alternative Energy
Solar panels are producing about 37,500 kilowatt-hours per year of electrical energy at Bristol-Myers Squibb’s manufacturing facility in Anagni, Italy. It correlates to a greenhouse gas reduction of 15,000 kilograms per year. In March 2007, the plant installed a solar energy photovoltaic system to provide electricity to its offices. The larger second set of panels was installed in December 2008 to power the facility’s wastewater treatment plant. While the total energy production for the two systems is not expected to be a significant percentage of the site’s energy used in 2008, this is only the beginning of our alternative energy sustainability projects.
Green Facilities
Bristol-Myers Squibb’s engineering group has embraced the green building standards under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System for construction of our new biopharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Devens, Massachusetts. Leveraging that experience, green building concepts are now incorporated into the company’s engineering design guidelines, and LEED criteria are considered and implemented, where appropriate, in all projects. Visit our Worldwide Facilities page to learn more.
Conserving Land & Helping Threatened Species
We are setting land aside for conservation in a wide range of our operations world wide. Our campuses for manufacturing, R&D, distributions and administrative offices are able to conserve habitats, including forests, grassland, marshes, bogs and reefs. We are planting trees, installing birdhouses and more. Many of our facilities worldwide have adopted and support a local endangered or threatened species, in many cases with direct involvement of site employees.
Partnering With Communities
Bristol-Myers Squibb supports environmental efforts in the communities where we live and work. As an example of our commitment, we are a founding sponsor of the Lawrence-Hopewell Trail, a 20-mile multipurpose recreational trail and transportation corridor that runs through public and private lands in New Jersey's Lawrence and Hopewell Townships. The trail will help support an active, livable and sustainable community with opportunities for alternative forms of transportation to reduce reliance on automobiles as well as promote recreation, health and fitness, and outdoor education.
Green Meetings
We are reducing air and land travel with a focus on decreasing the number of meetings to those that are essential, and conducting those via video or teleconference whenever possible.
Minimizing Environmental Impact
Listed below are examples of some projects we have implemented or are experimental with:
- The company’s Information Technology team found that removing screen savers from all employees’ computers in the U.S. saves about 1.9 million kilowatts of energy and $266,000 annually.
- Office light switches have occupancy sensors so that the lights automatically turn off when the office is unoccupied.
- The company’s facilities group is experimenting with no-flush urinals, each of which would save up to 30,000 gallons of water a year.
- Recycling of paper, cardboard, glass and plastic bottles, printer cartridges, solvents, batteries, electronic equipment and computers is standard practice.
- Our packaging group is developing more efficient options for products that require maintenance of cold temperatures during shipping, and in 2008 introduced new shippers that greatly reduce material waste.
- Our employees must zip into white Tyvec polyethylene jump suits before they can enter into sterile works areas. We have been recycling these since 2000 and have actually earned more than $40,000 at our Syracuse, New York manufacturing facility, which we have donated to Vera House, an agency that helps battered women.
Visit our Sustainability website to learn more about our overall Green and Sustainability practices and initiatives.