Sustainable waste management at the sites

The Waste Management team helps developers of medicines to use the most sustainable methods right from the start. The team gives advice on the choice of solvents. They advise which solvents should not be used because they are more difficult to recover. In addition, the team defined a variety of projects over the past 3 years to reduce waste.

For example, in Geel a recycling destination was found for 155 tons of a methanol/water waste layer, a waste flow which originates during one of the production processes. Recovery firm Dislaub from France managed to recover methanol from the waste layer. This waste layer used to be incinerated, now it is recycled. The raw material recycling accounts for a reduction of 1.75 tonnes CO2 per ton of waste or 270 tonnes CO2 per year.
In addition, the company in Geel recycled 46% percent of the solvents. The waste tank park consists of 12 tanks of 49m³ and creates storage room for waste and more opportunities for recycling.
In Beerse 5 tonnes were removed from the waste figures by using rejected sodium thiosulfate as a raw material for the water treatment installation in Geel. The rejected lot was perfect for this application.
In cooperation with the different departments the waste materials team continues its search for opportunities to maximally eliminate waste materials or process them in the best possible way. Because of the variety of products and processes this is not, however, a simple task. In addition, the obviously very welcome increasing production volumes also result in more waste, something that makes the reduction target of 10% compared to 2010 even more challenging.