Water stewardship

We recognise that our operations can have adverse impacts on water resources. To minimise these impacts and to use water responsibly, we have initiatives across our business which aim to protect this natural resource for our business, our employees, local communities, and the ecosystems on which they depend:

• Across AstraZeneca sites: Decoupling water demand from business growth with our 2015–2025 water efficiency key performance indicators; working to link performance targets with the local context by setting site-specific water targets
• In drug development: Adopting Resource Efficiency Targets to reduce the water demand in drug development; conducting Life Cycle assessments (LCAs) to calculate the water footprint across the whole product life cycle including the raw materials used to make the drug substance. See more in Product environmental stewardship
• Maintaining Water Quality: Preventing pollution by applying, assessing, and reporting compliance against safe discharge targets for Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) produced or formulated by our manufacturing operations; ensuring water quality is not compromised through patient use of products through environmental risk assessments and reporting via our EcoPharmacoVigilence Dashboard. See more in Pharmaceuticals in the environment (PIE)
• In our supply chain: Applying the same approach for safe discharge targets across our supply chain to prevent pollution from our API suppliers; implementing a Supplier Sustainability Framework
• In the communities where we operate: Developing partnerships to drive collective action in the river basins where we operate

We are continuing to strengthen our understanding of local water context at locations across our network and within our supply chain. Supporting these efforts is the WWF Water Risk Filter tool, which identifies and evaluates water risks around the world. Using the WWF methodology, we are broadening our understanding of our water-related risks and identifying areas for investment across our value chain.

As members of the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) we support a global movement to advance good water stewardship practices. We also aim to strengthen our relationships and build new partnerships with stakeholders within the communities where we operate. Starting in 2024, we will invest $5 million per year to fund nature restoration and water stewardship projects at locations near our sites.

Our longer-term ambition is to implement Science-Based Targets for (SBTs) for freshwater in strategically relevant locations to further mitigate risk where locally appropriate.

Business Leaders’ Open Call for Accelerating Action on Water

We support the Open Call for Water Action towards collective positive water impact to benefit at least 100 water-stressed basins by 2030. We are committed to building water resilience across our global operations and supply chain, and working collaboratively across sectors to accelerate positive water impact.

Through our continued collaboration with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Sweden, we championed a sector-level water risk assessment of the global pharmaceutical supply chain and published a case study on using scenarios to assess future climater-related risks. Further actions we have taken include:

• Leading with stewardship rather than management: Adopting water stewardship as the default framing for water better positions companies to engage with others to find solutions to these external water-related risks. We are building our understanding of shared water challenges and setting locally-appropriate water targets at key sites.
• Strategically addressing water quality more comprehensively across the value chain: Deteriorating global water quality could bring public expectation for action on APIs in the environment, regardless of their source. In a multidisciplinary consortium of some 26 public and private sector partnership of experts we lead the IMI-PREMIER collaboration, which aims to identify tools to address the environmental risks of pharmaceuticals, including aquatic habitats.
• Understanding raw material water-related risks: While the quantities of raw materials used in pharmaceutical manufacturing are perceived to be relatively small, links to water intensive sectors such as mining and agriculture, mean the water-related risks of the raw materials part of the value chain may not be so small. We’re taking steps to understand risks deep within our supply chain. This case study on assessing water risks of commodities illustrates how we worked with WWF to understand water-related risks linked to two strategically important commodities used to produce many of our products – palladium and palm oil.
• Collectively responding to shared water challenges in priority basins: Shared water challenges represent a potential risk and opportunity for the sector to play a leadership role in finding solutions which create benefits for both the sector and surrounding communities. In 2021, we introduced a water stewardship pilot programme to deepen our understanding of the water risks we face in the basins where we operate, as well as what actions to prioritise to mitigate these risks. The pilot is focused on efficient water use within the boundaries of our sites, along with water quality and collective action opportunities in the local basin. We are prioritising six key sites in water-scarce areas across five countries, sites which face increasing availability and quality risks. Shared water challenges represent a potential risk and opportunity for the sector to play a leadership role in finding solutions which create benefits for both the sector and the surrounding communities.

Our Water Stewardship strategy is embedded within Natural resources, which is a material focus area under the Environmental Protection pillar of our Sustainability Strategy.

Learn more about Water stewardship in our Sustainability Report.