Life cycle assessment as a tool to support decision making in the biopharmaceutical industry: Considerations and challenges

• The paper reviews the use of environmental tools for the biopharmaceutical industry.
• A decision-support LCA tool for the biopharmaceutical industry is proposed.
• The tool is based on LCA methodology.
• The tool can aid in the more systematic selection of sustainable processes.

The past decade has seen an increasing focus on the issues surrounding climate change and this has triggered international governments to develop environmental legislation and policies for the energy-intensive industries (EIIs) that can help reduce their anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions. The biopharmaceutical industry is a relatively new EII. The industry is important for global health as it is a main provider of affordable new therapies, achieved through the genetic manipulation of living organisms. Historically, attractive financial returns have encouraged the biopharmaceutical industry to focus on employing decision-support tools to estimate the process economics of manufacture. However, as the industry matures, the level of environmental scrutiny is increasing. Therefore, there is a need for the development of environmental tools specific to this industry to help guide the selection of environmentally favourable manufacturing operations. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a commonly used environmental tool. We study the potential for application in the biopharmaceutical industry as an aid to decision making. Such tools assess the environmental impacts of a product or process over the entire life cycle. This paper reviews the use of LCA in the context of decision-making when applied to evaluate the environmental impact of the biopharmaceutical industry's manufacturing processes.