Meeting Sustainability Goals in Your Lab’s Water Management Plan
In life sciences, water isn’t just water. It’s the key to everything we do. Water compliance, consistency, and quality can make or break drug development and safety. But with increasing sustainability goals and water challenges, how can facilities keep up?
To answer that question, it’s important to explore the water-related risks that biopharmaceutical facilities and plants face, why sustainability is so important to the industry, and how next-generation technology is solving for the future.
Water risks in life science and biotech facilities
Water standards are critical to life sciences companies. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the No. 1 reason for drug shortages is quality manufacturing issues at a facility — and water has a massive impact on that quality. As every leader in the industry knows, water is highly regulated in the biotech world, with each of the four types carrying stringent standards and quality measures.
Water systems include intensive monitoring, data tracking, and maintenance. A biotech plant or facility must maintain compliance with these standards. Unfortunately, some processes may put these companies at risk of noncompliance, such as:
Manual processes, which are time consuming and prone to error. Fixing manual errors can take up to 20% of an operator’s time.
Reactive maintenance, which is costly. Studies estimate that reactive repair costs are 25-30% higher than predictive maintenance.
Data integrity, which is critical. Approximately 3 of every 4 FDA warning letters to pharma companies cite data integrity issues.
Slow response times, which especially plague older systems. Longer response times and poor communication with outdated systems can delay production and impact outcomes significantly.
Leaving these risk points unaddressed can lead to shortages of drugs on the market, hits to a company’s brand reputation, government penalties, and drops in revenue. It’s clear these are risks that must be managed.
The importance of sustainability goals and water management
The next whale of a problem in life sciences? Pharma is falling behind on sustainability goals. And yes, those goals are lofty.
Industries in compliance with the Paris Agreement, an international treaty on climate change, have committed to 58.6% emissions reductions by 2025. But a recent study published in the Journal of Cleaner Production found that the global pharma industry contributed 55% greater greenhouse gas emissions than the automotive industry in 2015.
Failure to comply with sustainability goals can negatively impact a company in several ways:
Cost management. Greater efficiency helps streamline systems and product quality, which leads to higher productivity, faster approvals, and better profit.
Brand reputation. Consumer loyalty is more often tied to a company’s ability to deliver on sustainability promises.
Federal compliance. Companies face penalties, slowdowns, and lost revenue if they fail to comply with regulations.
Corporate social responsibility. Failing to meet sustainability goals doesn’t just hurt the company and its ability to sell products — it also harms the environment.
Water consumption and wastewater discharge are critical components of sustainability. Inefficient water use can devastate local water supply and result in water scarcity, while poor wastewater management can have a catastrophic impact on surrounding ecosystems.
Pharma companies must do their utmost to remain compliant with water health and water sustainability goals in the years ahead.
The solution is here: Next-generation water management technology
The way forward in water management and safety in life sciences is through technology. Where poor facility design and outdated systems bring risk, new systems solve that risk.
Biotech and life sciences facilities now have access to technology that can deliver real-time water monitoring, automated communication, enhanced transparency, and data integrity. With smart sensors and a cloud-based, centralized platform, teams can access information on their water system in real time and ensure the system is free of risk.
Water management technology can:
Eliminate error-prone manual processes, delivering automated, integrated systems that are connected through Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technology.
Deliver predictive maintenance with real-time updates about equipment risks, failures, leaks, and more. Again, predictive maintenance can reduce costs by around 30%.
Elevate data integrity and transparency.
Escalate response time when quality issues arise, without adding undue burden to operators.
These solutions reduce risk, increase quality and productivity, boost brand reputation, and — of course — accelerate sustainability goals.
Real-time water care is changing the tide for pharma companies. To learn more about the latest innovations in water management, see our industry-leading solutions at Aquanomix.com.