Environmentally sustainable prescribing: recommendations for EU pharmaceutical legislation

The pharmaceutical supply and use chain has a pivotal role in health care, providing medicines that substantially contribute to people's health and quality of life. However, the development, production, transport, consumption, and disposal of medicines also pose considerable environmental challenges, affecting planetary health and, in turn, the wellbeing of all organisms, including humans.1,2 The lifecycle of medicines entails the use of large amounts of materials, water, and land, the generation of waste (eg, packaging), the production of greenhouse gases, and the release of pharmaceutical residues into the environment, posing a grave risk to ecosystems.