Employees at Sanofi Canada tour the newly built wastewater treatment and reuse facility.Supplied
The commitment to sustainability by Sanofi Canada has been hard to miss for anyone who’s visited the company’s 54-acre pharmaceutical research and manufacturing site in Toronto over the past couple of years.
“We’re on track to deliver $170-million in investments at our Toronto campus to directly impact and minimize our environmental footprint,” says Kate Winchester, the company’s head of manufacturing and supply.
Last year, Sanofi completed construction and started up a wastewater treatment and reuse plant that cut its municipal water draw by 20 per cent despite expanded operations. The facility reuses wastewater from throughout the site in its power plant boilers.
“This is a facility that’s really state of the art in terms of design,” Winchester says. “This plant is being used as an example of best practices with the Sanofi network around the world.”
This year, the company aims to finish the Energy Project, a comprehensive update of the campus’s power plant and other infrastructure that should reduce the carbon emissions of the growing campus by 30 per cent.
“While increasing our long-term demand, we are decreasing our emissions,” says Elena Savic, Energy Project lead.
These two initiatives dovetail with the multinational pharma company’s Planet Care program, which commits to five green goals: fighting climate change, limiting its environmental footprint, minimizing the environmental impact of its products and packaging, mobilizing people for sustainability and engaging suppliers and partners to work toward sustainability.
Sanofi Canada’s green efforts go beyond one-time capital projects, though. It takes ongoing steps to maintain environmental certifications relevant in its industry: ISO 14001 and ISO 50001. Its waste management protocol, which mandates the use of compostable food containers and cutlery in the cafeteria among other things, meant that just 0.73 per cent of all solid waste generated on-site in 2024 ended up in a landfill – 85 per cent was either reused, recycled or recovered.
And Sanofi solicits new ideas from employees. It even holds an annual Planet Care Challenge offering rewards to workers with the best, most practicable suggestions. Employee-led initiatives that have been implemented include free electric vehicle charging in the staff parking lots and an eco-friendly garden that produces vegetables and herbs.
Employees also spearhead an annual cleanup of an adjacent ravine. Since 2018, the company has sponsored two beehives in the area dubbed “Plan Bee”; employees can buy jars of the honey produced in the cafeteria.
“We’re taking ideas from employees because they’re there – they’re on the shop floor, they’re doing their jobs and we appreciate their suggestions,” Savic says. “I’m really glad to work at a company that promotes an environmentally-conscious mindset but also gives the opportunity for employees to lead those initiatives.”
An engineer by training, Savic stresses that there are opportunities at Sanofi beyond health sciences. Skill sets needed at the Toronto campus include finance, marketing, health and safety and more. The organization espouses a “One Sanofi” culture, whereby employees from various backgrounds are encouraged to focus on common goals.
“We care about not just the impact we have on public health, it’s important to think about the impact our company has on society overall,” Winchester says. “I think it’s meaningful for employees to work for a company that is not just focused on the bottom line, but really on this broader impact we have on the world at large, and our impact from an environmental perspective is a key component of that.”
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Advertising feature produced by Canada’s Top 100 Employers, a division of Mediacorp Canada Inc. The Globe and Mail’s editorial department was not involved.