Greener Product Growth: How MilliporeSigma Built Its Greener Alternative Product Portfolio
As of the end of 2022, the Life Science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, which operates as MilliporeSigma in the U.S. and Canada, offered 1,860+ Greener Alternative Products in its Life Science portfolio. It’s an impressive achievement that traces its beginnings back to the late 1990s.
Life Science processes frequently require the use of highly hazardous chemicals. A group of colleagues, including Dr. Ettigounder (Samy) Ponnusamy, Fellow & Global Manager, Green Chemistry, wanted to create meaningful products while also reducing environmental harm to the planet. The collaboration that Samy kickstarted at Sigma-Aldrich, which was acquired by Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany in 2015, resulted in the first Greener Alternative Product in 2007 and has continued to expand ever since.
Following the 12 Principles of Green Chemistry, Samy and like-minded colleagues collaborated to embed sustainability into the company’s products. The harmonization of Green Chemistry with product data led to the birth of the proprietary DOZN™ tool. DOZN™ uses the 12 Principles of Green Chemistry to transparently evaluate the relative greenness of chemicals and chemical processes. It is a free online tool that enables users to quantitively identify greener alternatives for their products or processes, without sacrificing quality or quantity.
Not only is DOZN™ used internally to re-engineer existing products, but it is also used worldwide in academia and across the Life Science industry and has so far been embedded into University curricula at four major universities. To date, the tool has been cited 78 times in scientific papers and viewed almost 18,000 times, with over 1,800 DOZN™ users. The tool helps users collect data on product or process sustainability and quantify the environmental impact of their work without sacrificing quality.
Learn more about the company’s Greener Products & Solutions initiatives by visiting its sustainability and social business innovation webpage.
