Pharma manufacturer Evonik is piloting a new ‘handprint’ metric to quantify the socioeconomic benefits of manufacturing practices, a move that the company says can expand understanding of the pharma industry’s impact beyond a focus on carbon footprints.
Based in Essen, Germany, Evonik has implemented the handprint methodology to assess the positive economic impacts of its drug delivery product PhytoChol, an ingredient of lipid nanoparticles used in mRNA vaccines such as Pfizer and BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine Comirnaty, according to Evonik’s sustainability development manager Ranjan Fletcher.
She added that Evonik is also looking to expand use of the metric across other products.
The initiative is being implemented in collaboration with its originator, the WifOR Institute, an economic research institute based in Darmstadt, Germany.
“The [carbon] footprint quantifies the harm that is being done to the environment, for example in terms of pollution or in terms of emissions, while the handprint looks at what is the societal or the economic benefit,” stated WifOR’s senior impact strategist Katrin Ostwald.
A carbon footprint encompasses greenhouse gas emissions released by an entity or process in a direct and indirect manner. Ostwald said WifOR’s process for calculating the handprint involves modelling the social benefits of a given product or intervention, such as the health benefits resulting from the manufacturing of a vaccine, and translating this benefit into economic outcomes.
She explained that parties can quantify the contribution to the gross value that’s being created by a healthier and more productive population.
According to Fletcher, pharma manufacturers such as Evonik have previously had no means of assessing the broader socioeconomic impact of their products. This has left an unmet need among manufacturers for a methodology to quantify their impact in a way that can guide decision making.
Fletcher said the company would like to use the handprint to steer its product portfolio, especially to develop products that are demonstrably more sustainable. Crucially, Ostwald noted the metric offers a route to monetise the impact of Evonik’s products and bridges the gap between sustainability performance assessment and economic value creation.
Ostwald is optimistic about the handprint metric becoming as prevalent as a carbon footprint. As growing populations place more demands on increasingly scarce resources, particularly on the pharma industry, Fletcher said an objective measure of environmental, social, and economic benefits is becoming ever more desirable.
