Transforming shared risks into sustainable solutions

Pharmaceuticals save lives — but the systems that support their production, use, and disposal are under mounting strain to become more sustainable.

Globally, pharmaceutical production and consumption has been rising for many years. By 2028 the global pharmaceutical market is expected to be worth USD 2.3 trillion with 3.78 trillion defined daily doses administered per year. This is up from a value of USD 1.21 trillion and 2.96 trillion defined daily doses in 2018 (figure 1).

However, the pollution impacts of this rapid growth have been poorly accounted for. Chemicals are released into the environmental across many stages of the pharmaceutical life cycle – during production, use and disposal. The consequences of this are already visible: rising antimicrobial resistance, polluted ecosystems and declining biodiversity.

These growing environmental impacts are posing increasing and shared financial, regulatory, operational and strategic risks to organisations across the entire life cycle – from global pharmaceutical corporations and national healthcare sectors to regional pharmacies and local waste management structures.

Transforming our pharmaceutical systems is not optional — it’s essential. But no single sector can do it alone.

Together, we need to fundamentally rethink how pharmaceutical systems are built and governed—designing solutions that protect public health and economic resilience without compromising the environment.

This is why the Pharma Pollution Hub was created.

We are an independent, cross-sector think tank working to make pharmaceutical systems more sustainable, equitable, and resilient.

We connect research, policy, and practice to identify risks, turn knowledge into action, and accelerate real-world solutions.

Through systems thinking and cross-sector collaboration, we:

  • Understand system-wide risks, inefficiencies, and knowledge gaps across the pharmaceutical lifecycle — from production to pollutant

  • Translate research into practical, scalable solutions for policy, healthcare, and environmental management

  • Convene diverse stakeholders and support the governance, innovation, and partnerships needed to build smarter, more aligned systems

At the Pharma Pollution Hub, we bring sectors together to navigate complexity so that we can successfully transform shared risks into sustainable solutions.

Our Journey

We are in the process of developing our website which will soon provide much more detail of our background and the services we offer. 

The Pharma Pollution Hub builds upon the research experiences of Dr Kelly Thornber and Prof Charles Tyler, who identified a need for an independent body to drive action to address the complex issue of pharmaceutical pollution. 

Our preliminary work to test the Pharma Pollution Hub as a concept brought together 30 stakeholders to map the UK healthcare pharmaceutical system as a case study.  This was published as a call-to-action in 2022.  Since then we have also held initial think tank workshops and wrote reports on topics including:

-       Integrating pharmaceutical pollution into healthcare decision making (Nov 2023)

-       Social prescribing and sustainable pharmaceutical usage (Jan 2024)

-       Integrating pharmaceutical pollution into sustainable finance initiatives (July 2024)

 

In summer 2025 we completed a large in-depth systems thinking analysis which worked with 50 stakeholders to identify 37 leverage points for transformational change of the UK healthcare pharmaceutical system.  This is currently undergoing peer review and will be made available as soon as possible.

 

Funding

Our work to-date has been supported by a series of small grants from the Wellcome Trust, Medical Research Council, Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, and the University of Exeter.

In November 2024 the Pharma Pollution Hub registered as a charity, which means that our sustainability is dependent upon securing financial support for our work. We hope to raise funds by being costed in to support translational research projects, by applying for research and charitable grants to carry out our own research/impact activities, and by being commissioned to facilitate and create independent outputs.