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Environment, health and safety

Every year, we report our environment, health and safety (EHS) performance to the public on this website as part of the Corporate Responsibility Report. The legacy companies (Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham) individually published EHS reports for a number of years prior to the formation of GSK in 2000. Copies of these reports are available on the Corporate Register website.

This section of the website contains detailed descriptions of the way we manage EHS, our programmes and plans for the future.

• View details of our 2007 environmental performance
• View details of our 2007 health and safety performance
• View prior year reports

Environment, health and safety issues are managed through an integrated system that aims to ensure issues and risks are identified, standards are established, training is provided, targets set and audits conducted.  This systematic management approach to EHS is aligned with the International Standards Organisation (ISO) 14001 standard and the OHSAS 18001 standard.

We have a clearly defined EHS management structure and organisation and a framework for managing EHS issues.  The framework includes our EHS policy, EHS vision and 64 global EHS standards. Our EHS Plan for Excellence sets out our strategy for improving our environmental performance up to 2010 with five-year improvement targets applying throughout our operations.  Consultation with stakeholders has helped us identify the prime sustainability challenges we face. These are: energy efficiency, the impact of pharmaceuticals in the environment, and more sustainable materials consumption. We have begun work developing strategies to tackle these issues and will publish our plans in 2006.

Business processes integrate EHS into the business and we have environmental programmes to manage emissions and releases to air, water and land. Our safety programmes cover driver safety, material safety, ergonomics and process safety among others and our health programmes cover resilience and mental well-being and human immunodeficiency virus as well as exposures to chemicals.

EHS audits assess implementation and conformance with our standards and awards recognise excellence in EHS.  Frequent communications and an intranet system provide a constant flow of useful information about EHS.

Our long term plan for excellence charts a journey which begins with improving our systems, progresses to leadership in EHS performance, and ultimately moves us towards sustainability. The 10-year programme envisages continuous improvement as well as identifying specific actions. As good EHS management and performance are achieved we will set ourselves more challenging sustainability objectives on materials efficiency, energy efficiency and use of renewable resources. We also need to look more closely at the inter-relations between the social, economic and environmental impacts of our business

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