Green and sustainable science
Protecting the environment is a key part of our commitment to operating responsibly.
Why green chemistry matters
We believe it’s our responsibility to bring medicines and vaccines to people in a way that sustains a healthy planet, including lowering the environmental impact of our products and packaging. That’s why we’re employing a green and sustainable science framework that applies green chemistry principles and quantitative sustainability metrics and goals to our scientific process.
Purpose for Progress Impact Report 2024/2025
What is green chemistry?
Green chemistry, also known as sustainable chemistry, is the design of chemical products and processes that reduce or eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances. It aims to minimize environmental impact while maximizing efficiency, safety and economic viability. By focusing on the principles of sustainability, green chemistry promotes the development of eco-friendly alternatives across various industries and can be applied through approaches such as biocatalysis, which uses enzymes to enable more sustainable chemical synthesis.
How does Merck approach green chemistry?
Accelerating science and technology
We see transformative science, engineering and innovation as critical enablers to developing sustainable, low-cost manufacturing processes that can provide environmental and economic benefits over the life cycle of our products.
Reducing waste
Our aim is to develop the most efficient and sustainable processes at product launch, with the goal of lowering the environmental impact from our commercial manufacturing.
Advancing biocatalysis
For more than 25 years, we’ve invested in advancing biocatalysis, including the generation of novel enzymes that enable better synthetic routes and greener manufacturing of complex products compared to traditional methods.
Applying “green-by-design” methods
We utilize an innovative “green-by-design” development strategy to progress from a synthetic route to a fully optimized and sustainable commercial manufacturing process — we call it our sustainability mindset.
How we’re innovating sustainable solutions
Green and sustainable science in action
Watch to learn more from our scientists about green chemistry and sustainable drug development.
Programs and initiatives
We’ve developed tools, initiatives and programs to help create cost-efficient manufacturing processes with low environmental impact.
We’re a recognized leader in green chemistry
Take a look at some of the honors we’ve received for our leadership in green chemistry.
- 2025 Peter J. Dunn Award for sustainable manufacturing innovation: We’re honored to receive the Peter J. Dunn Award for Green Chemistry & Engineering Award for the design and development of a sustainable and scalable manufacturing process of a complex antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) drug-linker. This work recognizes the application of green chemistry principles to redesign a complex manufacturing process, significantly improving efficiency and scalability while reducing material use and energy‑intensive operations.
This recognition builds on Merck’s continued leadership in green and sustainable science, following prior Peter J. Dunn Awards in 2023, 2022 and 2021 for advances in biocatalysis, biorenewable manufacturing and innovative process design. - 2025 Green Chemistry Challenge Award for innovation in sustainable biocatalytic processes: We’re honored to receive the 2025 Green Chemistry Challenge Award in the Greener Synthetic Pathways category for a biocatalytic manufacturing process that replaces a complex, multi step synthetic route with a single, highly efficient enzyme cascade. Building on our long standing leadership in green chemistry, this recognition highlights how advanced biocatalysis can reduce waste, eliminate organic solvents and enable scalable, low impact manufacturing. This marks our eleventh Green Chemistry Challenge Award.
- 2025 Data Science and Modeling for Green Chemistry Award for algorithmic process optimization (APO) for pharmaceutical development: We’re honored to receive the 2025 Data Science and Modeling for Green Chemistry Award from the ACS Green Chemistry Institute Pharmaceutical Roundtable for “Algorithmic Process Optimization (APO) for Pharmaceutical Development.” This work recognizes the application of advanced data science and modeling approaches, including Bayesian Optimization, to guide more efficient experimentation and support sustainable pharmaceutical process design.
- 2024 Barron’s Most Sustainable U.S. Companies: We’re honored to be the top pharmaceutical company in Barron’s list of 100 Most Sustainable U.S. Companies for 2024. This award is a testament to our colleagues and partners whose commitment to sustainability helped us earn a spot on the list for the fourth year in a row.
- American Chemical Society’s Green Chemistry Institute® Pharmaceutical Roundtable: We’re a founding member of the American Chemical Society’s Green Chemistry Institute® Pharmaceutical Roundtable, a partnership between the institute and member pharmaceutical companies. The Roundtable drives the advancement of education and research on new ways to apply green and sustainable science to pharmaceutical discovery and manufacturing.
