Can generics ever truly go green?

This week’s Expert View comes from Ben Ellis, general manager at Lupin Healthcare UK. Mr Ellis considers how the generics industry’s long-standing focus on affordability is expanding to include environmental responsibility, setting out how sustainability must now evolve into a core pillar of how medicines are developed, manufactured, and supplied.

For decades, the generics industry has been dedicated to supporting the financial sustainability of health systems. By delivering high-quality, affordable alternatives at scale, generics have helped protect treatment access and enabled health services to meet growing demand without compromising standards of care.

This contribution is particularly visible in areas like HIV treatment, where we’ve seen first-hand how the wider availability of generic antiretrovirals has supported the National Health Service (NHS) to improve outcomes while saving hundreds of millions of pounds. Generics, in this sense, are more than cost-savers, they are enablers of long-term resilience and health equity.