Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility at Eli Lilly and Company

Environmental Sustainability

Making medicines requires the use of valuable
resources including energy, water and raw materials.
We’re committed to continually improve our
environmental impact across our product life cycles
and supply chain.
Through 2017, despite significant production increases
at our largest sites, Lilly has reduced its greenhouse
gas (GHG) emissions by 8.4 percent (from 2012 baseline
year) by investing $43 million in more than 170 energy
reduction projects globally. Currently, we are projecting
we will meet our 2020 goals to improve waste efficiency
by 20 percent and reduce phosphorus emission in
wastewater by 15 percent.
Data for 2018 performance will be shared on lilly.com
in June 2019 in our United Nations Global Compact
Communication on Progress report. In 2020, we will
establish our next generation goals and start tracking
our progress towards them.
Lilly recognizes the potential impacts associated with
climate change and the risks of severe weather events.
In 2017, our manufacturing plant in Puerto Rico sustained
minor damage from Hurricane Maria. Since then, Lilly has
completed the design for a new nine-megawatt heat and
power system at our Puerto Rico facility.
The project will improve our resiliency to severe
weather events and our environmental performance.
Cogeneration, which uses combustion to generate
electricity on-site while also recovering usable heat,
presents the opportunity to further reduce GHG
emissions in our operations. This unit is expected
to be completed in 2020, resulting in more than
$7 million of energy savings annually and approximately
a 15-percent reduction in GHG emissions for our
Puerto Rico facility.
The same facility in Puerto Rico has installed a closed
loop recycling system for acetonitrile, a raw material
in our manufacturing process. This project will
eliminate the shipping of hazardous waste via ocean
container to the continental U.S., and reduce the
shipping of virgin acetonitrile to Puerto Rico by
80 percent. The system also reduces supply chain
risks and improves business continuity.