From this trip to GSK, I realized that pharmaceutical manufacturing can be interesting as well! I feel that the whole process of the manufacturing is just like a scaled up of a science experiment, just that everything is a 10000 plus times larger!
We learned about sustainable living during the visit to GSK, and some of the current methods of ensuring sustainable living used by GSK would be to cut down the carbon footprint. I think that the target of a carbon-neutral factory by 2050 is a good target, although it is rather difficult to accomplish. Carbon-neutral means 0 carbon emissions, and this is a good way to ensure sustainability as carbon is one of the main contributors to global warming.
Methods of ensuring sustainable living used by other companies (not GSK) include increasing the battery life of electronic gadgets, and it is seen from apple's ipad 2, which has a 10hr battery life. This allows people to save more electricity.
I think my greatest takeaway is to know how the Jurong Factory works. I never imagined that a whole block could be linked to make the active ingredients in medicines. I thought that operators would be bringing the chemicals from one place to another in trolleys, but I think using a whole block to manufacture the active ingredients is much more effective as there is no need for manual work of bringing chemicals from one place to another as they can be transported downwards with gravity, so each level can complete one process and pass it down to the level below them to continue on the next part of the manufacturing.
