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Roche earns EPA award
By Richard Valenty, Colorado Daily Staff Writer
Saturday, April 15, 2006
Robert E. "Robbie" Roberts, Region 8 Administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, visited the Roche Colorado Corporation facility in Boulder Friday to hand out a little hardware.
Roche picked up an Environmental Achievement Award for its partnership with the EPA in designing the Indian Country School Laboratory Hazard Consultation Program.
The program is intended to match Indian Country schools with chemical professionals to assess school laboratory hazards and to recommend safe chemical storage and handling procedures. A Roche release said schools around the country have chemicals stored in deteriorating containers, placing students and teachers at risk.
"When government and private industries work together, there's almost nothing we can't accomplish," said Roberts Friday.
He also joked that there can be problems if the two don't work together and use lots of lawyers.
About 30 people attended the ceremony, and Roberts honored Roche employees Leslie Harris, Kevin Borud, Glenn Smith, Robin Livingston and Jim Wilson individually for their roles in the program.
"They're all members of Roche Colorado's pollution prevention team," said Roche Public Affairs Manager John Tayer of the fivesome. "The team represents the full spectrum of disciplines on our site — everything from chemists to engineers and environmental experts."
The Roche Group is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, and the Roche Colorado campus in Boulder is a pharmaceutical research, development and manufacturing facility.
Bob Arnold, Roche director of regulatory affairs, spoke before Roberts and said the corporation has also made great strides in reducing volatile organic compound (VOC) and greenhouse gas emissions as well as heating/cooling energy use in recent years.
He also said Roche uses a great deal of solvents in pharmaceutical manufacturing, but said Roche has recovered about 50 million pounds of solvents through recycling over the past five years.
"We make life-saving drugs, first and foremost," said Arnold. "But that's not enough — we need to make them sustainably."
And Roche is best known for producing pharmaceuticals, including Fuzeon, an anti-HIV medicine called a fusion inhibitor that blocks the virus before it can enter and infect healthy cells. Arnold said the product contains 36 amino acids and a Roche release said it won the 2004 International Prix Galien international award for the world's most innovative new medicine.
But Friday's ceremony was largely devoted to the environment and sustainability, even if Arnold mentioned that Roche was the first company to bring vitamin C to the general market.
"To us, it's a great tribute to all of the progress that Roche Colorado has made in meeting the highest environmental performance expectations," said Tayer. "In particular, this award is an example of our efforts to apply our environmental expertise to community issues."
Contact Richard Valenty about this story at (303) 443-6272 ext. 126 or valenty@coloradodaily.com
