We make the active ingredients of important and innovative medicines at our chemical production site in Geel. This also involves waste flows, so we looked for a way to reuse them. Therefore, we are using our Plant on a Truck to recycle chemicals. This new approach means we save around 500 tons of CO2 emissions annually and we can recycle around 100 tons of chemicals every year.

Reusing materials (working with InOpSys)

Plant on a Truck is an innovative concept where we treat process water locally in a mobile purification plant, which allows us to reuse useful materials, destroy toxic ingredients and purify the water.

We are currently using this concept to recover zinc from the process water from a drug for type 2 diabetes, for example. We then use this zinc again in the production process. A textbook example of the circular economy in practice!

With “Plant on a Truck”, Janssen won the Belgian Business Award for the Environment 2017–2018 from the Federation of Enterprises in Belgium (VBO).

Recycling solvents (working with DNCP)

We have been working with De Neef Chemical Processing (DNCP) for several years to recycle as many solvents as possible, which is also reducing our environmental footprint. As a result, Janssen has been reusing two solvents, isopropanol and toluene; these are needed in the synthesis of one of our medicines.

We send our solvent flows to DNCP in Kallo, who distill them to the desired quality. They are then sent back to Janssen so we can reuse the materials. This is an important innovation that will take us another step closer to our sustainability goals.