ACG is committed to promoting human health. But how can we have healthy people if the air we breathe, water we drink, and land we live on isn’t healthy too? For this reason, ACG is proudly taking the lead in developing a range of more ecologically sustainable solutions. Some solutions help our customers create more environmentally-friendly pharmaceutical and nutraceutical products, while others aim to make our own processes more sustainable.
More sustainable capsules.
Academics around the world agree that the single biggest contribution humanity can make towards lowering its environmental impact is to reduce dependence on animal products.
ACG is at the forefront of HPMC capsule development, which replaces bovine and porcine gelatin with cellulose to produce hard shell capsules. In many instances, the new HPMC capsules actually outperform their gelatin counterparts.
More sustainable machinery.
In order to reduce energy consumption, ACG's 'central drive mechanism' design philosophy aims to reduce the number of motors in its machines. Fewer movements draw less power, making our equipment more energy efficient. Of course, this is not only good for the planet, but also our customers’ electricity bills.
Another focus area has been to replace energy-intensive materials used in equipment construction. For example, many of the external guarding panels on our new machines have seen stainless steel (a highly energy-intense material to manufacture) being replaced with impact-resistant composite materials. A further benefit of these materials is that they are 100% recyclable.
In pressurised equipment, we are also building environmental safeguards into all our new models. Essentially, in the case of a pressure shock event, all materials contained in the machine body remain contained, thus preventing contamination of the environment.
More sustainable packaging materials.
Blister packaging has always been seen as a necessary evil – it provides the best possible protection against moisture and oxygen, but due to its laminated nature, is also unrecyclable.
Until now.
Not only are we in the advanced stages of developing a number of fully recyclable protective packaging materials, but also others that are compostable, biodegradable, and halogen-free. Our compostable paper-based product is due for launch imminently.
Sustainability in our own manufacturing.
Over the past few years, we have been auditing our own manufacturing functions, looking for opportunities to become more sustainable.
To this end, we have now built an enormous solar farm in India to provide energy to some of our factories. As soon as possible, our intention is that all of our manufacturing will be powered by the sun.
A Zero Liquid Discharge facility has also been built at our biggest capsules plant, with solid wastes being sold for commercial use.
Furthermore, our new factory in Dahnu, India, was recently awarded a prestigious Green Dot award for excellence in environmental sustainability – to date the only pharmaceutical manufacturing plant in the world to achieve this recognition.
We continue to make carbon-neutrality and reducing our ecological impact a top corporate priority.