By tracking our emissions, effluents and wastes worldwide, we are able to identify the greatest opportunities to reduce our direct environmental footprint, evaluate the overall impact of new projects and ensure that we maintain reductions achieved through past initiatives.

Reducing emissions and wastes of all types begins with the original design of our pharmaceutical manufacturing processes and continues through the installation of those processes. Our "green chemistry" program helps us design our new processes to use more benign chemicals and reduce our generation of waste and our consumption of energy, water, and other resources. We have been building awareness and green chemistry expertise among our process development chemists to help them develop more sustainable ways to synthesize our products.

Solvents play a key role both in the synthesis of pharmaceutical compounds and their formulation into final products. In 2008, almost 40 million kilograms of solvent were used in Merck's production and cleaning processes. As a result of their importance in many of our processes, solvents are the primary component that we must manage in our emissions, effluents and wastes. Product quality requirements for pharmaceuticals necessitate cleaning of equipment between batches or processes. Though we seek to use water-based methods for cleaning when they are equally effective, solvents — primarily methanol — are often required for such cleaning.

We have active programs to reuse and recycle our used solvents, as well as to find other beneficial uses when reuse and recycling are not practical. To reduce our solvent emissions, we employ in-process and end-of-pipe treatment technologies and controls.

Waste

In 2008 Merck managed almost 74,000 metric tons of wastes from our operations. Of this, 46,800 metric tons were classified as waste that requires special handling, hereafter referred to as 'hazardous' which includes (but is not limited to) hazardous, special, and infectious waste. Merck's total hazardous waste generation decreased 23 percent from 2005 to 2008. Increases in solvent recovery and reductions in on-site production volumes are among the most significant factors contributing to that trend.

The primary component of our hazardous wastes is solvent from our manufacturing operations. Of the hazardous waste we generate, 29 percent is recovered off-site and reused either by Merck or by other industries. Another 26 percent is burned as a source of energy in industrial furnaces such as cement kilns or to generate power.

Most of the remaining waste is product or research waste that is not recyclable. Of the total hazardous waste generated, 39 percent is incinerated and less than 3 percent of our hazardous waste, none of which is liquids, is sent to landfills.

At a number of our facilities, we are able to reuse solvents on-site in our processes. This lowers our process costs by reducing the amount of new solvent we need to purchase and also decreases the amount of waste solvents we need to transport off-site for treatment. In 2008 more than one third of the solvents we used for manufacturing were recovered solvents.

In 2007, we began to track our generation of non-hazardous waste. Based on the first two years of data, we have found that of the 27,000 to 32,000 metric tons of non-hazardous wastes we generate each year, we recycle, on average, approximately 44 percent.

Merck has had a global waste management services vendor approval program since the late 1980s to ensure that the wastes we send offsite are managed in an environmentally responsible manner. This program requires facility inspections by either Merck personnel or a third party. Approval takes into consideration the commercial waste facility's demonstrated ability to responsibly manage our hazardous waste, product waste and other industrial waste streams.

We also purchase products and services that have both upstream and downstream impacts not measured in our direct environmental footprint. Merck is aware that what we purchase, what services we use, with whom we do business, and how much we consume are all within our control and we can make a positive difference by making better choices. We are therefore working on aspects of our upstream and downstream impacts that represent both economic and environmental benefits and are qualitatively tracking progress such as policy changes where data may not yet be available.

The following reflect some examples of these indirect environmental improvements:

• Packaging components: Merck is in the process of consolidating the number of unique product package images we maintain worldwide. This change will reduce packaging discards and packaging line waste linked to line starts and stops.
• Office Supplies: Merck's Corporate Headquarters sites in New Jersey are using 46 percent less copy paper per employee now than they were in 2001. The reduction was the result of employee awareness campaigns and implementation of a global program that moved employees from personal printers to network duplexing printers.
• Surplus Exchange: On Earth Day 2004, Merck launched a user-driven on-line program to provide employees an efficient way to post low and medium-value supplies and equipment to seek other departments who can make use of them. The most commonly transacted items are office supplies, but laboratory items and unused chemicals have also found new homes via the Surplus Exchange. Five years after its launch, thousands of transactions have been documented – saving money, avoiding waste, reducing upstream manufacturing impacts, and reinforcing an employee ownership culture.
• Verizon Hopeline Partnership: Our U.S. facilities and Field Sales staff actively participate in the Verizon Hopeline Partnership. Our commitment to this program, which benefits victims of domestic abuse, began three years ago. To date more than 31,000 cell phones, associated with both business and personal use, have been donated for reuse or recycling. Recycling cell phones allows for the recovery of important precious metals and keeps waste out of landfills.

Air Emissions

The largest source of air emissions at our sites is carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the production and use of energy and from other combustion processes such as thermal oxidizers for treatment of air emissions and solid waste incinerators. For more information on greenhouse gas emissions and energy use click here.

These combustion processes also result in emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and sometimes sulfur oxides (SOx), depending on the fuels used. Emissions of NOx and SOx from Merck facilities continued to trend downward, with a 7 percent reduction in NOx from 2006 through 2008 and a 24 percent decrease in SOx during the same period. Energy conservation measures, production variability and the closure or sale of sites all contributed to the decreases. In addition the use of cleaner fuels further contributed to declines in SOx during that period.

The largest source of air emissions from our manufacturing processes is solvent use, which is the primary component of both emissions to air of volatile organic compounds (VOC) and Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) compounds. Emissions involving both of these parameters continued to decrease between 2006 and 2008. Although our solvent emissions vary from year to year due to the batch campaign nature of our business and variability in the amount of solvents required for different products, a large portion of the decreases in air emissions were due to the closure of two Merck sites. It is important to note that since 1996 Merck has maintained its 90 percent reduction in TRI emissions from 1987 levels, despite growth of the Company during that time.

In 2007, we began tracking emissions of ozone-depleting compounds. Our current emissions, which are primarily due to minor leaks from temperature control systems, are small compared to other emissions from our sites. Nevertheless, we will continue to monitor them for improvement opportunities as we move forward.

Wastewater Effluents

All of Merck's process wastewater is treated prior to discharge. Merck operates our own biological wastewater treatment plants at four of our production facilities; the remainder of our production facilities wastewater is treated by the local municipal wastewater treatment facility.

TRI emissions to water reflect a reduction in 2008 versus 2007, due primarily to the sale and/or closure of two major manufacturing facilities as well as lower manufacturing volumes at certain facilities. We reported increases in TRI emissions for 2006 and 2007. Nearly all of this increase was associated with a requirement to assess nutrient discharges to surface water in one watershed, which resulted in increased reporting of nitrates at one facility. We are currently installing technology that will reduce these nitrate discharges.

During 2008, we began to track the characteristics of wastewater discharged by our facililies.

2008 Wastewater Characteristics (Metric tons)
	COD	Suspended Solids	Ammonia Nitrogen	Phosphorous
To surface water	46	83	4	9
To MTP	2,122	440	12	10

As part of the drug discovery and development process, Merck assesses the potential environmental and human health effects of our products. Since the early 1990's Merck has used that information to establish compound-specific criteria and procedures to assure that our factory discharges do not contain residual product that present a risk to human health or the environment. For more on pharmaceuticals in the environment, see the Product Stewardship section.

Environmental Remediation

Management practices for emissions, effluents and wastes have evolved significantly in the past 30 years. With research and manufacturing operations dating back more than 100 years, some facilities were operated during times when regulations and the understanding of good environmental practices were not at the level that they are today. As a result, Merck has responsibility for remediation of these historical environmental concerns and has instituted investigations and projects to ensure aggressive and appropriate cleanup actions where Merck bears responsibility.

Expenditures for remediation and environmental liabilities, including formerly owned and operated sites, were $19.5 million in 2007 and $34.5 million in 2008. The increase in 2008 was primarily due to the execution of a guaranteed remediation program (GRiP®) with an environmental consultant to complete the ongoing remediation project at one of our former manufacturing sites. In addition, Merck currently is a potentially responsible party at 18 multi-party Superfund sites in the United States. In 2008, two Superfund claims were successfully resolved as de minimis settlements. These amounts do not consider potential recoveries from other parties.  

The content on this page was last modified on September 15, 2009.

Merck & Co., Inc., Whitehouse Station, NJ, USA, and Schering-Plough Corporation, Kenilworth, NJ, USA, are now one company. We have combined our global operations under the name Merck & Co., Inc. We are working to update our corporate responsibility Web site to reflect our new, combined, global organization.