Pam Cheng

There are few experiences quite so frightful as the inability to draw a simple breath—something the nearly 500 million people worldwide with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) could tell you. That’s why pocket-sized, pressurized inhalers have been such a life-saving boon to this large and growing population. But the very same puffs that clear struggling lungs make a surprisingly big contribution to fouling the air around us, releasing hydrofluorocarbon propellant—a powerful greenhouse gas—into the atmosphere. Now, AstraZeneca, the maker of the Breztri inhaler, is doing something about it.

Under the leadership of Pam Cheng, the company’s chief sustainability officer and EVP of Global Operations and IT, Breztri may soon be released in a new package with a new propellant that has 99.9% less global warming potential than the hydrofluorocarbons now in use. The company plans to submit its regulatory filings in Europe, the U.K., and China by the end of the year. Currently, the use of AstraZeneca’s consumer products contributes to the release of 6.7 million metric tons of greenhouse emissions per year worldwide. Switching to more climate-friendly inhalers, including the new Breztri, would slash that total by 1.3 million metric tons.

And that’s not all. As part of its Ambition Carbon Zero program, the company is seeking to decarbonize its clinical trials, implementing such straightforward changes as minimizing participants’ travel to their trial sites and consolidating shipments of lab kits and sample-collection materials. All of this is part of Cheng’s and AstraZeneca’s goal of halving the company’s overall emissions—including factory output—by 2030, and cutting it by 90% by 2045. A company that is helping to give close to half a billion COPD patients their breath is taking steps to ensure that the rest of the human population benefits too.

Correction, Nov. 12:

The original version of this story mischaracterized the emissions benefits of Breztri. Transitioning all of AstraZeneca's inhalers, not just Breztri, to more climate-friendly ones will help the company reduce emissions by 1.3 million metric tons. This story has also been updated to clarify the units of measurement are metric tons, not American tons.