Why Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) Matter for the Pharmaceutical Industry

What if measuring your pharmaceutical products’ environmental footprints could open doors that price alone never will? Clinical outcomes and cost have always decided whether a new pharmaceutical product — be it a vaccine, weight loss drug, or chemotherapy — reaches patients. That's not going to change, nor should it. But lately, the institutions that decide which therapies make it to market are asking a new question: What impact does this therapy have on the environment? They want medicines built with raw materials that have a low environmental impact and that won't become a regulatory liability in the future. They're looking for therapies that leave less behind at end of life, and whose footprint a company can prove with data.

Including the environmental impact of therapies has never been a requirement, voluntary or mandatory, for market access bids, but this could be changing.  For pharmaceutical companies ready to get ahead of that shift, a new standard for Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) and Product Carbon Footprints (PCFs) is fast becoming one of the most powerful tools for winning market access.  

Long considered the touchstone for measuring the environmental impacts of products as varied as food, furniture, concrete, and glass, LCAs give companies and their suppliers a clear, data-driven understanding of environmental hotspots across manufacturing and supply chains, while PCFs — an LCA focused solely on a product’s climate change impact — help companies drill down into their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Yet despite their proven value elsewhere, the use of LCAs and PCFs in the pharmaceutical industry has never been standardized until now.

Introducing PAS 2090:2025, Pharmaceutical products - Product category rules for environmental life cycle assessments, the first internationally applicable framework for conducting both LCA and PCF assessments of pharmaceutical products. Here, we explore how PAS 2090-aligned LCAs and PCFs help pharma companies make sustainable decisions, reduce risk, and lead within a climate-conscious market.

Introduction of PAS 2090:2025

Released in November 2025, PAS 2090 reflects considerable cross-sector collaboration. The standard was developed by the British Standards Institution (BSI) with co-sponsorship from NHS England, the Office for Life Sciences (UK), and the Pharmaceutical LCA Consortium, using extensive global stakeholder input with insights from academia and healthcare. Over 475 stakeholders from 35 countries participated via a digital engagement hub, with more than 400 public comments submitted during the public consultation period. 

In terms of functional specifications, PAS 2090 covers “pharmaceutical products intended for human use and the pharmaceutical product life cycle, including the drug substance, formulation, device (if applicable), packaging, distribution, patient use and end of product life.” It guides the process of assessing the environmental impact of pharmaceutical products from “cradle,” as in the sourcing of raw materials, up until the product’s final disposal, or “grave,” at end of life. 

Though still in a nascent stage, the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations recognizes PAS 2090 as the “first publicly available specification to establish harmonized Product Category Rules (PCR) for conducting LCAs and PCFs of pharmaceutical products.” By adopting one unified standard, companies can generate aligned assessments without producing different analyses for each healthcare payer, thus reducing workload and improving trust in the data for payers and health tech evaluators. We’re looking at a new era of transparency and comparability ushered in by this new, publicly available specification.

Growing Importance in Market Access

The details of LCA standardization across the global pharmaceutical industry will need more time to be carved out completely. But already major health systems including NHS England, The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, and the Norwegian Hospital Procurement Trust are increasingly looking at integrating environmental criteria into therapy evaluation and purchasing. As a result, therapies supported by credible LCA and PCF data can gain a competitive advantage in market access and tendering. (Tender, or tendering, refers to a formal process by which pharmaceutical therapies and healthcare technologies are procured.)

Consider the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), which sits at the gateway to the UK public healthcare market. Its rigorous assessments of a health technology's safety, clinical effectiveness, and affordability directly shape what the National Health Service (NHS) will fund. Now, NICE is exploring whether environmental impact evidence could join that submission, and whether it would be structured much like the clinical and cost-effectiveness data producers must submit as part of their market access bids. Their Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Innovation Laboratory is assessing what the evidence might look like, and looks to PAS 2090 as the standard that can provide a credible, consistent framework.  

Healthcare payers are beginning to evaluate the environmental footprint of the therapies they buy. In crowded therapeutic categories, that creates an opening. Early adopters that showcase credible LCA and PCF data can differentiate their products and demonstrate the exact kind of leadership that resonates in a climate-conscious world. This is especially powerful for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that can't always win on price. Environmental performance gives them a different way to compete — one built on integrity and innovation rather than a race to the bottom on cost. And there's now evidence that it works.

In a case study conducted with the Norwegian Hospital Procurement Trust (Sykehusinnkjøp), researchers found that prioritizing environmental criteria paid off in the long run through a more secure supply chain and a shift away from non-renewable materials. Rewarding environmental performance over price raised public spending in the short term, but it kept suppliers in the market and reduced medicine shortages over time. Most tellingly, in the Trust's anti-infectives tender, environmental criteria brought suppliers back into contention — 8 of 21 contracts went to bids that were not the lowest priced. In other words, by showcasing their products' reduced environmental impact along with assessments of supply chain risks and hotspots, some companies are returning with competitive bids that not too long ago may have had little hope of winning.  

Operational and Supply Chain Benefits

LCAs also offer a number of benefits for improved business operations and overall supply chain efficiency. By pinpointing energy intensive steps and materials with disproportionate environmental impacts, LCAs provide companies with a better understanding of their critical supply chain vulnerabilities. And by tending to these hotspots strategically, organizations can reduce environmental risk, optimize performance, and lower long-term operational costs.  

A few highlighted benefits coming from the use of LCA in support of pharmaceutical product development include:

• Process optimization, spotting materials and supply chain areas with outsized environmental impact.
• Minimizing waste and harmful emissions across the product’s life cycle for environmental and regulatory gains.
• Resource-efficient product design, resulting in lower material and energy use and decreased production costs.
• Enhanced supply chain resilience, as LCA insights help address process and supply chain vulnerabilities before they disrupt operations. 

Future-proofing for 2030 and Beyond

A decade from now, environmental data won't be a differentiator — it will be an expectation. Climate pressures and resource scarcity are already reshaping operational risk and cost, and global health systems are steadily raising the bar for the environmental evidence they require from suppliers.

Companies that adopt PAS 2090-aligned LCAs today are doing more than reducing impact. They're future-proofing, building the transparency and market credibility that tomorrow’s industry will demand. The head start starts now. 

Ready to Strengthen Your Environmental Strategy?

Our LCA experts help pharmaceutical companies and suppliers generate high quality, PAS 2090 aligned assessments that unlock strategic, operational, and market access advantages.

Contact us to get started with an LCA or PCF that elevates your sustainability and competitive position.

About the Author

Millicent Gabriel is a Life Cycle Associate and sustainability consultant with SCS Consulting Services, bridging life sciences and environmental stewardship. She holds an MS from Northeastern University in Cell and Tissue Engineering and a BS in Chemical Engineering. With a five-year background in the pharmaceutical sector, she combines expertise in Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) and Product Carbon Footprints (PCF) to help empower clients to make smart decisions for emission reductions. She also focuses on Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) and end-of-life management of products and packaging.