The pharmaceutical industry faces the challenge of expanding access to life-saving medicines while reducing the environmental impact of discovering, manufacturing, packaging and distributing them. To overcome this challenge, the two goals cannot be treated as competing priorities. Patient health depends on a resilient pharmaceutical system, but that system requires sustainable energy supplies, reliable water resources, functioning infrastructure and healthy communities.

This means that sustainability can no longer be an afterthought within the wider pharmaceutical value chain. Sustainability challenges cannot be solved by a single company, supplier, region or function in isolation. In this article, Silvia Forroova, Director of Partnerships & Sustainability at CPHI and founder of the CPHI Sustainability Collective, explores why collaboration across the pharmaceutical value chain is essential to turning sustainability ambitions into practical action, and where some of the greatest opportunities for progress lie.

This will be discussed further at the upcoming CPHI Sustainability Summit, taking place on day one and two of CPHI Milan, on 6-7 October, 2026. The Summit is a two-day collaborative platform, designed exclusively for pharmaceutical industry professionals committed to accelerating sustainable transformation across the entire value chain, in a discussion-focused event. Find out more about the Summit and ticket registration at cphi.com/europe/ sustainability-summit/.

A Global Challenge With Regional Realities

Sustainability challenges are a genuine global concern, but the specific pressures companies face, and the solutions available to them, can vary significantly depending on local conditions. Global organisations need common expectations without assuming that every supplier or manu- facturing site starts from the same position. Across different markets, similar challenges emerge as shared priorities for pharmaceutical companies and their supply chain partners: