Novo Nordisk’s Quest to Halve Water Use by Recycling Pharma Wastewater

In a quiet corner of Novo Nordisk’s Hillerød campus, a pilot plant hums along, trying something that many would call almost impossible: turning the murky by‑product of drug manufacturing into water clean enough to be poured back into the very same process.

The idea sounds simple enough—recycle what you already have—but the reality is anything but. Pharmaceutical production, especially for injectables, demands water of astonishing purity. Any trace of contaminants could jeopardise patient safety, so the bar is set sky‑high.

To tackle the challenge, Novo Nordisk has teamed up with the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). Since December 2025, DTU researcher Ravi Kumar Chhetri has been installing and fine‑tuning a membrane‑based purification unit that relies on reverse osmosis. In plain language, the system pushes water through a semi‑permeable membrane, leaving behind dissolved solids, organic residues and whatever else the manufacturing line spat out.

“If we can recycle the wastewater streams that come from the processes in the pharmaceutical production itself, we estimate that we can reduce our water consumption by 50 %,” says Andreas Herfelt, Novo Nordisk’s Environmental Lead. That figure isn’t pulled out of thin air; it reflects the proportion of water that currently leaves the plant as waste after a single use.

Denmark’s water‑use stats add urgency to the project. While most industrial sectors have kept their water footprints steady over the past decade, pharma has bucked the trend, climbing almost 36 % between 2012 and 2022, according to the Danish Academy of Technical Sciences.

So what happens after the reverse‑osmosis stage? The purified water still needs a thorough “vetting” before it can re‑enter the clean‑room environment. Chhetri and his team continuously sample the output, running a battery of chemical analyses to spot any lingering compounds. Those data feed into a risk assessment led by Professor Anders Baun, who helps decide whether any detected residues pose a high, low, or negligible risk to drug quality and patient health.

“The water used in the production of pharmaceuticals – especially injectables – is subject to the strictest quality requirements,” Herfelt reminds us. “We can’t afford to let unwanted substances slip through.”

If the risk analysis comes back clean, Novo Nordisk could replace a large chunk of its fresh‑water intake with recycled water, easing pressure on local supplies and strengthening the company’s overall water security—an increasingly valuable asset as climate variability hits European water resources.

It’s worth noting that this isn’t just about cutting costs. Traditional water‑saving measures in industry often focus on using less water in the first place—optimising cooling towers, re‑using steam condensate, that sort of thing. Here, the ambition is to close the loop entirely, turning a waste product back into a resource. “Recycling water in a production company has great potential for water savings compared to other measures,” Chhetri explains.

The pilot is still in the data‑gathering phase, but Novo Nordisk is already compiling documentation for the Danish Medicines Agency. Should regulators give the green light, the company could set a new benchmark for sustainable pharma manufacturing worldwide.

Until then, the team keeps tweaking membrane pressures, monitoring ion concentrations, and, occasionally, sipping coffee while staring at graphs that look more like modern art than scientific data. It’s a reminder that breakthroughs often hide behind a mix of high‑tech equipment and plain‑old persistence.