[e-drug] Resuing bottles in drug manufacturing (3)

[Michael Anisfeld <manisfeld@globepharm.org>]

E-drug: Reusing bottles in drug manufacturing (3)
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Several years ago, as a Quality Assurance manager is a medium 
size pharmaceutical manufacturing company, we evaluated the cost 
of receiving back glass bottles and recycling them.

Our analyses showed the following problems 
a. our operations were geared to processing (washing/drying) 
thousands of bottles at a time - when bottles would be 
returned, they would come back in ones-twos-etc., but not in 
unique easy to take apart pallet loads.

b. we would have to sort the bottles by size

c. we would need space to store the bottles, and people to do 
hand movement of the bottles, rather than fork lift truck 
movement of thousands of bottles on one pallet

d. we would have to validate a washing cycle that could cope 
with the vagaries of what people might do with the bottles 
after their pharmaceutical use - we found bottles returned 
with reside of acids, caustic, paint and other stuff that we 
never identified! The range was so great as to render 
effective cleaning validation impossible

e. and lastly, the analysis was performed in the late 1980s, and 
we were about to move from glass to single-use plastic, as 
significant cost saving measure - and the plastic bottles could 
not withstand an effective hot water wash without deformation

The project economics loudly screamed that, while environmentally 
friendly, our costs would rise significantly, to the point that we might 
need to raise our prices by 15-20% to cover the recycling.  The
project also screamed from a quality perspective that we would 
never be able to guarantee that the recycled bottles were clean.

So the project never got off the ground.

Thought you might like the input.  Intuitively recycling is the way to 
go; practically in a pharmaceutical industry setting there are too 
many problems, as stated above.

Michael Anisfeld

manisfeld@globepharm.org
www.globepharm.org

Globepharm
P.O. Box 589=20
Deerfield  IL 60015

Ph: USA +1+847 914 0922
Fx: USA +1+847 914 0988


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