This is pointed out by a report prepared by the UN Global Compact in Spain, which has analyzed the contribution of the Spanish pharmaceutical and health sector to the 2030 Agenda. This report cites SIGRE as an example of business synergy and where organizations from the same sector join forces. to address the common challenges posed by sustainable development. A prominent position as the engine of the economy that cannot but be intertwined with the well-being of all. This led SIGRE, the entity that was created by and under the principles of the circular economy, to go one step ahead in terms of compliance with the SDGs when it was still a pioneering act of voluntarism and corporate responsibility.
We do not have to go back very far to reach the time when environmental legislation only required the medicine industry to manage its packaging. Today, when the evolution of awareness regarding sustainability has evolved at a forced pace, driven in part by the threats that climate change predicts, the requirement seems trivial but it was a first step. In this context, the pharmaceutical sector advocated for assuming, not only the management of the packaging, but also the management of the waste of those unused or expired medications that accumulated in homes and that, in no case, should go to the landfill. trash can.
And it did so by installing a specific bin for the collection of medications discarded in pharmacies. It was the birth of Punto SIGRE, the commitment that made the entity's work visible to the public and an important milestone in raising public awareness about the importance of properly closing the life cycle of a medicine. Today, points out Humberto Arnés, CEO of SIGRE, “our greatest achievement is having become, over time, the largest collaborative project in the pharmaceutical sector in Spain, having achieved that the habit of recycling medication waste is fully implemented in the 86% of the homes in our country.”
The initiative meant that seven years later, Law 29/2006 on Guarantees and Rational Use of Medicines and Health Products “will reflect in its articles the environmental importance of establishing systems that allow the correct management of medicine waste generated in homes.” Arnés details that the circular model that, through SIGRE, the sector applies, allows “working on the life cycle of the medicine and its packaging in three fundamental aspects: the eco-design of the packaging, the promotion of an increasingly appropriate use and the management of the waste generated by the consumption of said medications once the treatment is completed.”
After two decades of work, SIGRE has become the most complete drug recycling management system in Europe thanks to the participation of the entire sector, industry, distribution and pharmacies, the supervision and protection exercised by environmental authorities and the business prevention plans that it develops. Also to its awareness campaigns and the existence of a pioneering and world-renowned drug packaging and waste classification plant equipped with a high degree of automation and artificial intelligence tools that offers high recycling percentages of recovered packaging materials.
Pharmaceutical distribution is responsible for collecting waste medicines and their packaging through SIGRE Points. This system guarantees pharmaceutical control and traceability of this waste, and saves the annual emission of 1,400 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. From their warehouses, authorized managers take them to the medication packaging and waste classification plant located in Tudela de Duero (Valladolid).
Once in the plant, the waste goes through different phases to separate the packaging and the remains of medicines. Almost 70% of the packaging is recycled and the calorific value present in the remains of medicines and those packaging that cannot be recycled is used to use them as a source of energy in industrial facilities, thus avoiding the consumption of fossil fuels.
