RESPONSIBILITY > CREATING A CULTURE OF RESPONSIBILITY > ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP

Our Environmental Promise

AbbVie's approach to environmental stewardship is focused on the areas where we can have the largest impact across our value chain –- from the sourcing of raw materials, to the manufacture and distribution of our products, to the use and disposal of our products by patients and health care providers. Our environmental stewardship initiatives help protect the planet while improving efficiency, reducing costs, and preserving our ability to do business in the future.

We have created comprehensive management and governance systems to ensure a responsible environmental approach is fully integrated into our day-to-day business.

Reducing Our Carbon Footprint

Climate change is one of the most critical issues facing our planet. We are working not only to anticipate and manage the operational impacts of extreme weather patterns and water scarcity, but also to custom-tailor our products to adapt to significant changes in the global disease burden. As a global health care company, we are committed to helping address this issue –- by reducing our direct impacts from manufacturing and by making a positive difference in managing indirect impacts across our value chain.

Like most companies, AbbVie emits carbon directly from our manufacturing, warehousing, and office activities and through our vehicle fleets. We also contribute indirect carbon emissions throughout our value chain –- through our sourcing and distribution efforts, as well as patients' and health care professionals' use and disposal of our products.

WE ARE COMMITTED TO FURTHER REDUCING CARBON EMISSIONS IN EVERY ASPECT OF OUR BUSINESS.

We have been measuring and managing our direct emissions for many years, especially with respect to our three greatest sources of impact; our manufacturing fuel combustion, our electricity use, and our global sales fleet. AbbVie has a comprehensive environmental management program aimed at reducing our emissions from each of these sources. We work across the value chain to reduce our carbon emissions, and we encourage our suppliers, distributors, and other stakeholders to reduce their impact as well.

Examples of our carbon reduction activities include:

Energy reduction:

Because energy use is directly proportional to carbon emissions, energy conservation not only reduces environmental impact, but also generates cost savings. Since 2006, the pharmaceutical manufacturing plants within AbbVie have reduced energy consumption by 18 percent by installing cogeneration systems, installing solar energy, funding energy efficiency projects, and rationalizing operations. These energy reductions have resulted in more than 500 million pounds (250,000 tons) of carbon reduction.

Green fleet:

AbbVie's 3,500-vehicle U.S. sales fleet accounts for approximately 4 percent of our global emissions. Since 2006, we have reduced the U.S. fleet's carbon emissions by about 26 percent. We have achieved this performance through both vehicle selection and program changes.

Product Stewardship

AbbVie is committed to responsible product stewardship. Our product stewardship strategy is rooted in our efforts to analyze, understand and continually improve the life cycle environmental profile of our medicines –- from the raw materials and ingredients we procure for operations, through product distribution, end use, and management of product residuals. Our product stewardship strategy focuses on three key areas:

• Reducing the environmental impact of our product packaging while keeping our products safe and effective
• Working with our supply chain to evaluate chemicals of interest
• Reducing pharmaceutical residuals in water

AbbVie collaborates with a wide range of stakeholders to ensure appropriate stewardship of our products across our value chain. We are revising product features and design to enhance the safety and effectiveness of our products, while minimizing their environmental impact across the life cycle of manufacturing, storage, distribution, use, and disposal. Examples of our efforts include:

• Replacing air bags used for void fill at our European distribution center with environmentally friendly Cell-O Green EZ air bags that contain 100 percent recycled HDPE material
• Reducing board thickness on tertiary packaging for our HUMIRA medication by switching to a single-wall corrugated box, saving more than 26,000 pounds of corrugate board
• Qualifying an optimized ocean freight distribution process for our Synthroid medication to reduce the number of shipments, saving more than 7 metric tons of CO2e emissions per year
• Working with local authorities near our manufacturing plant in Jayuya, Puerto Rico, to ensure responsible water management
• Investing in "green chemistry" approaches such as reducing the use of solvents in processing