Greener Products and Solutions

Global biopharmaceutical products supplier MilliporeSigma has partnered with specialty waste management company Triumvirate Environmental to recycle the commingled single-use plastic scrap into saleable lumber products.

As part of our employee spotlight series, we’re sitting down with Ettigounder (Samy) Ponnusamy, fellow and global manager, green chemistry at MilliporeSigma, to learn more about the work he’s doing to move the needle. The life science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany operates as MilliporeSigma in the U.S. and Canada.

The quest for supply-chain sustainability requires paying as much attention to the package as the product inside it.

That necessity that doesn’t escape global life science leader MilliporeSigma. The company has launched a four-year effort to enforce green packaging for well over 300,000 products, translating into some 30,000 shipments a day.

I recently had the fortune to visit one of our customers, and this visit was unlike any other I’ve ever had. To understand how we got to this day in March, let me give you some flavor of how these experiences usually go for context.

There’s route one: Our sales team emails or calls and says, “Hey, our customer is asking what we do for sustainability.” Typically this happens in April — Earth Month, of course — and other times during quarterly customer reviews. They ask for a few slides or send a questionnaire. This is my most loathed format because, from my end, I don’t see much done with the data and these requests take time. The sales rep is concerned because the request is steep and the details are tough, especially for those who aren’t subject matter experts. They also want to make su

A small Austrailian company called Circa Group and the lab services giant Merck KGaA have teamed up to launch a new solvent intended to replace two old but environmentally suspect standbys: N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP) and dimethyl formamide (DMF).

Business-to-business (B2B) companies should be considering the sustainability of their packaging as much as consumer goods companies, according to pharma firm Merck, KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany.

MilliporeSigma, which manufactures chemicals and other lab supplies, lets customers return plastic foam coolers and chemical containers. MilliporeSigma has also worked to repurpose the more difficult-to-recycle plastic products used in science. After being sterilized, the plastics are turned into plastic lumber that can be used in decking, speed bumps, and park benches.

MilliporeSigma’s Cyrene is a solvent that the science and technology company says is safer, more sustainable, and can offer better performance than petroleum-derived products. Cyrene is manufactured in two steps from tree-derived waste cellulose through a process that is nearly energy neutral, and releases water to the environment, according to the company.

As part of our employee spotlight series, we’re sitting down with Jane Murray, global head of green chemistry at MilliporeSigma, to learn more about the work she’s doing to move the needle. The life science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany operates as MilliporeSigma in the U.S. and Canada.

My impatience has been a red thread through many of my experiences, specifically in a space that is chock-full of opportunity, like our Corporate Responsibility work at MilliporeSigma. This experience started years ago with a novel product now known at Cyrene™. One of my team members did the legwork to identify a novel solution that could be a potential replacement for two challenging but ubiquitous solvents. While these solvents are extremely common, they’re under increasing scrutiny from organizations like Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH).

This novel material was arrived upon through a collaboration with an Australian company named Circa and The University of York’s Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence (GCCE). It’s a great example of repurpos