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Sustainability - Our responsibility

Climate change: it’s not a trend of the time. Reducing and offsetting CO2 emissions has long been a focal point at Queisser Pharma when it comes to our corporate activities.

Harmony between mankind and nature – sustainability and ecological responsibility have been heart-felt concerns of ours for some time now. For over 20 years, Queisser Pharma GmbH & Co. KG has been working on conserving resources. We were certified in accordance with the environmental standard, DIN EN ISO 14001, back in 1997. The aim of this standard is to reconcile constant improvement of our environmental performance with simultaneous compliance with environmental legislation.

Climate change measures
Climate change measures

Queisser Pharma operates climate-neutrally. For us, reducing and offsetting carbon dioxide emissions is an important concern. We are also working on reducing plastic in our packaging.

Since the introduction of this standard, environmental policy guidelines have been in place, which are communicated openly to our employees. This management system is inspected by means of internal audits and management reviews, as well as by a regular inspection by an accredited company. During regular meetings of the Environment Committee, which the management also attend, legal reforms, structural changes, new investments, praise, criticism and our achieved environmental objectives are discussed and evaluated. New environmental objectives are also set and approved.

As well as the finished product, our entire manufacturing process is also examined in view of the legal requirements. The selection of our raw materials’ quality, regular auditing of our contract manufacturers and the traceability of transport routes and our appointed transport companies are also inspected to ascertain their environmental relevance. 

To maintain this current international standard, Queisser Pharma GmbH & Co. KG will also continue with this system in the future. 

Our CO2 footprint

In our company, we also bear the responsibility for limiting the global temperature rise and reducing the CO2 emissions caused by mankind. In the long-term, we need a carbon-free global economy. As a pharmaceutical company, we want to play our part in this.

As a company, we rise actively to the challenge of reconciling climate protection with our corporate activities. 

"We fully offset the unavoidable CO2 emissions of our company."

Together with climate protection experts, ClimatePartner, we have calculated the CO2 footprint for our business activities. For 2022, this amounted to 59,764 tons of CO2.
This is the carbon footprint of Queisser Pharma and includes the greenhouse gas emissions of the entire company, including our entire supply chain through to our end customers – on a global level. 

We aim to reduce our CO2 emissions through a variety of measures in our day-to-day business. Unfortunately, as a pharmaceutical company, it is not possible to avoid all CO2 emissions. For this reason, we fully offset any unavoidable CO2 emissions by providing financial support to climate protection projects.

Reducing plastic packaging

In terms of product and packaging design, we take care to ensure that we only use companies that have been certified in accordance with European standards as suppliers. Each supplier is audited beforehand and must complete a questionnaire relating to their environmental compatibility and sustainability. The usability of new materials is continually tested in the field of production/packaging and logistics. This also includes small issues, such as the use of adhesive tape on bio-based film and folding boxes with a high proportion of recycled paper.

We are working continually on a solution to offer environmentally friendly packaging materials for our products. However, the requirements on the safety and stability of product packaging for our product group are very strict.

We are already using a variety of measures to reduce our plastic material consumption, thus promoting sustainable life-cycle management and making a contribution to protecting the environment.

Here are a few examples of the changes we have already made in terms of packaging material: Our Doppelherz effervescent tablets are provided for sale on trays, i.e. small, stabilising displays. We have been able to switch these trays from plastic to recycled cardboard, which saves 18 tonnes of plastic waste per year.

We have also made changes to the secondary product packaging of our Doppelherz nasal sprays:
We have switched the packaging from plastic blister packs to folding cardboard boxes. This saves about 600 kilograms of plastic per year.

Another change has been made to our blister packs (= the foil strips in which the tablets and capsules are packaged). By optimising the design, we are able to reduce to number of blisters per product and therefore save on plastic packaging material.

In order to to recycle the remaining plastic waste, Queisser Pharma participates in the German „Green Dot“ Dual System. The 2022 Certificate of Environment is available for download here.