Merck is committed to designing, operating and maintaining our facilities and manufacturing processes in a manner that protects people and the environment.

The management of emissions, effluents and wastes from our facilities is important to the communities where we operate. To minimize our environmental footprint, we design processes that avoid or reduce demand for hazardous materials, reuse or recycle materials, and prevent the generation of waste. When prevention, reuse and recycling are not practical, we apply controls and treatment technologies.

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 their installation and operation. Through our green chemistry program we design new processes that use more benign chemicals and reduce generation of waste and consumption of energy, water and other resources. Our process development chemists have the green chemistry expertise and partners to support the development of more sustainable ways to synthesize our products. Our engineers look for projects to make our production more efficient.

There is more information about how we manage our solvent use, our air emissions, our wastewater effluents, our waste, and our remediation program, as well as data about our performance in these areas.