Pharmaceutical packaging is changing, with patient preferences and evolving legislation working in tandem to drive sustainability to the top of the agenda.

The need to introduce more environmentally responsible packaging has predominantly been a focus for consumer brands. And, while patient safety and product security remain critical, they must now be viewed through the lens of sustainability. As many companies increasingly incorporate ESG policies into the core of their business operations, it is clear the pharma packaging landscape is undergoing a permanent shift in the European market. Erwin Klünder, Head of Sales  – Healthcare & Flexibles at Graphic Packaging explores…

Driving Circularity

In recent years, consumers have shown a desire to make more responsible choices across many aspects of their lives; how they shop, how they travel, and now their healthcare needs. Patients expect pharma companies to help them make those choices – and supplying packaging that is easier to recycle is key.

At the same time, the European market is braced for the imminent introduction of its long-awaited Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) reforms. While the specifics of these reforms are yet to be finalised, it is expected that they will bring healthcare packaging into scope of sustainability legislation for the first time. This will likely have huge ramifications for the sector, no matter what the final form of PPWR looks like.

Healthcare packaging must be designed to facilitate efficient recycling and be easy to collect and sort into separate waste streams. Once recycled, it must also result in secondary material that is of sufficient quality and commercial value to substitute for primary material. Overcoming these potential circularity barriers is one of the three key problems that the PPWR is proposed to address.

The challenge for pharmaceutical companies is to find solutions that deliver on these requirements without compromising on the core principles of patient protection and product security.

Healthcare packaging has many important functions but the most important is to protect patients by ensuring medications can safely move through the supply chain without being compromised. Packaging design is also influenced by emerging trends, such as the increase in self-administration solutions, which are expected to grow significantly over the next decade. Packaging for these solutions must support the patient experience by fulfilling accessibility requirements for patients of all physical needs, including reduced motor capabilities. This shift requires not just technical expertise and advanced packaging engineering, but a deep understanding of the patient.

Packaging and pharmaceutical leaflets promote patient safety by incorporating high-quality printing to communicate clear dosage information and important safety messages to patients. This can also include value-adding features such as integrated patient alert cards.

A Future-Proof Solution

While the demands for more sustainable healthcare packaging are relatively new, other industries have been dealing with them for much longer. Food packaging, for example, is subject to many of the strict safety, hygiene, and product protection requirements of pharma packaging, and has been balancing these needs with tightening sustainability legislation and emerging consumer preferences for some time.

By turning to the food industry as an example, it is possible to leverage years of circularity expertise to inspire a new generation of tailored innovations in the healthcare market. For example, the food market is utilising cartonboard solutions that can offer equivalent performance to plastic for many applications. These materials can be enhanced with barrier coatings or films to create high-performance hybrid solutions.

The use of cartonboard as an alternative to secondary and tertiary plastic packaging in the pharmaceutical sector will align with new regulatory requirements and meet patient expectations. Cartonboard is capable of being recycled at scale – 82.3 percent of paper-based packaging is recycled in Europe – and meets Design for Recycling (DfR) criteria.

And the inherent versatility of cartonboard means it is continually innovated and refined. For example, advances in print finishing enable PET metallised board to be replaced by cartonboard printed with metallic effects or water-based inks which may improve pack recyclability.

The use of recycled content in cartonboard packaging is also increasing, as innovation and investment create recycled options that offer the whiteness, brightness, and printability of bleached cartonboards such as solid bleached sulphate.

This provides many exciting avenues for further innovation, as material developments and new structural designs create possibilities for material reduction and substitution, helping to reduce the environmental footprint of a pack without compromising its performance.

The versatility of cartonboard provides benefits on the production line that could future-proof packaging against the evolving needs of patients and the industry. For example, the rise of pharmacogenomics – precision medicines tailored to suit specific groups or individual patients – will lead to an increase in demand for smaller lot sizes. This will require shorter production runs and more complex print requirements, demanding high levels of operational efficiency on packing lines.

Sustainability and patient protection are not opposing aims. By adopting cartonboard and using it as a foundation to innovate, pharmaceutical companies can fulfil regulatory requirements while also meeting the needs of today’s patients.