April 1st is the date when pharmaceutical enterprises first apply for environmental protection tax after the Environmental Protection Tax Law of the People's Republic of China (hereinafter referred to as the "Environmental Protection Tax Law") is officially implemented. In the face of the industry's previous concern that "environmental protection tax will become the' life and death' of pharmaceutical companies", Zhang Daoxin, an environmental expert of China Chemical Pharmaceutical Industry Association, said: "The tax level set in environmental protection tax has not changed much compared with the previous one. In fact, it is mainly due to the change of tax name and payment department."

Steady progress, strict supervision, unchanged trend.

The environmental tax law, which has been implemented since January 1st this year, consists of five parts and 28 articles. Among them, taxable pollutants include air pollutants, water pollutants, solid waste and noise specified in the Table of Items and Taxes of Environmental Protection Tax and the Table of Taxable Pollutants and Equivalent Value. According to the environmental protection tax law, the air pollutant tax amount is from 1.2 yuan to 12 yuan per tax unit; The tax amount of water pollutants is from 1.4 yuan to 14 yuan per tax unit; There are four kinds of taxes on solid wastes according to their categories, of which the tax amount per ton of hazardous wastes is 1000 yuan; According to the noise exceeding the standard decibel, it is divided into five grades, and the tax amount is 350 yuan ~ 11,200 yuan per month.

Zhang Daoxin said that the waste produced by the pharmaceutical industry contains a variety of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which is very difficult to treat. Previously, the industry was mainly worried that VOCs such as cyclohexanone, isophorone and styrene would be included in the list of taxable pollutants by the environmental protection tax law, and high taxes and fees would be levied. Now, these are not all included. Therefore, for pharmaceutical companies, the environmental tax law is not as influential as rumors. "At the beginning of the legislation of environmental tax law, the principle was' tax burden shift', that is, from sewage charges' shift' to environmental tax, and the collection object was basically consistent with the previous sewage charges catalogue. The catalogue of sewage charges did not include VOCs such as cyclohexanone, isophorone and styrene before, and the environmental tax law has not been expanded. "

Although several VOCs that the industry is worried about have not been included in the taxable list this time, pharmaceutical companies should not be lucky. "There are many kinds of key VOCs, and their pollution equivalent values need a series of considerations. It is not feasible to directly list all of them in tax items, but it will be a key monitoring project of regulatory authorities in the future. At present, VOCs such as benzene, toluene, formaldehyde and phenols have been included in the scope of environmental tax law. " Zhang Daoxin said.

Different from before, the Environmental Tax Law points out that the people's governments of all provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government can make overall consideration of the environmental carrying capacity, the current situation of pollutant discharge and the requirements of economic, social and ecological development goals in their respective regions, and adjust taxes and fees "according to local conditions" within the tax amount range. In this regard, the industry is worried that if the tax standards vary greatly from place to place, it will lead to a "relocation tide" of pharmaceutical companies, especially API manufacturers.

Chen Baohua, chairman of Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., said that "doing a good job in the environment" and "industrial development" are dialectical relations. Environmental protection should be given the first place in enterprise development, and it must not be at the expense of the environment. Even if enterprises that fail to do well in environmental protection move, there will still be pollution problems. He stressed: "API enterprises should not regard environmental protection as a burden, but must do a solid job in environmental protection."

Dao Xin reminded enterprises that the cost of rushing to "relocate" enterprises may be greater than the cost of pollution control when the overall environmental tax changes little.

Tax reduction up to standard stimulates enterprises to take the initiative.

What is striking in the environmental tax law is the increase of tax relief policy.

According to the environmental protection tax law, if the concentration of taxable air pollutants or water pollutants discharged by taxpayers is lower than 30% of the national and local pollutant discharge standards, the environmental protection tax will be levied at a reduced rate of 75%; If the concentration of taxable air pollutants or water pollutants discharged by taxpayers is lower than 50% of the national and local pollutant discharge standards, the environmental protection tax shall be levied at a reduced rate of 50%.

Li Ran (pseudonym), who was in charge of environmental protection related work of listed pharmaceutical companies, said: "Whether sewage charges were levied before or the environmental tax law was established, its purpose was to promote enterprises to protect the environment and promote green production. Tax relief is also to encourage enterprises to consciously carry out green production. "

It is reported that Kailaiying Pharmaceutical Group will be the beneficiary of this tax reduction policy. According to Kuang Yan, vice president of the group, by adopting environmental protection facilities such as regenerative incinerator to treat low-and medium-concentration organic waste gas, the emission concentration of VOCs from the new factory of the group in Tianjin is only 25% of the emission standard of Tianjin (40mg/m3) and 8% of the national emission standard (120mg/m3). This means that the environmental protection tax of this factory can be reduced by 50%. "All factories in Kailaiying (including Tianjin, Dunhua and Fuxin) can basically realize that the air pollutants are lower than the prescribed pollutant discharge standard by 30%." Yan Yan said.

In fact, environmental protection has become a necessary condition for the development of pharmaceutical enterprises.

Environmental management system and occupational health and safety management system (EHS) are one of the important criteria for multinational pharmaceutical enterprises to select stable suppliers, and also the core criteria for testing the business ethics of CDMO enterprises. The improvement of enterprises' environmental protection can not only reduce taxes and fees, protect the environment, but also contribute to enhancing the international competitiveness of enterprises.

Li Zhenjiang, executive vice president of China Pharmaceutical Materials Association and chairman of Shenwei Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., said that doing a good job in environmental protection is not empty talk, but requires enterprises to truly realize the importance of protecting the blue sky and white clouds, and to invest funds in a down-to-earth manner to do a good job in pollutant treatment. It is understood that Shenwei Pharmaceutical, which has been selected into the demonstration list of green manufacturing system of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, has successively invested nearly 500 million yuan in environmental protection, and will also invest nearly 30 million yuan every year to keep "green".

The ultimate pursuit of green pharmaceutical companies' development

The modern manufacturing mode, which considers the comprehensive environmental impact and resource benefits, has been paid more and more attention by the industry and has become the strategic pursuit of industrial development in various countries.

In recent years, our government has vigorously advocated green manufacturing. On May 8, 2015, the State Council officially issued "Made in China 2025". As the first ten-year action plan for China to implement the strategy of manufacturing a strong country, "Made in China 2025" clearly states that efforts should be made to build an efficient, clean, low-carbon and recycling green manufacturing system.

To encourage enterprises to carry out green production, the General Office of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology organized the selection of green manufacturing demonstration enterprises. Up to now, two batches of 409 enterprises have been announced, of which only 26 are pharmaceutical enterprises.

According to Li Ran, green manufacturing is difficult for pharmaceutical companies to achieve in one step, mainly because the cost of decontamination is too high. "The pharmaceutical industry is quite special. Drug dosage forms and processes determine the factory structure and factory layout, and the composition of sewage and residues is also complicated. Therefore, many purification equipments need to be tailored. Different types of purification equipment, treatment capacity, etc., lead to great cost differences. " Li Ran explained: "If the chemical oxygen demand (COD) of the produced sewage fails to meet the standard after one purification, it is necessary to add purification equipment or repeat purification. However, an additional anaerobic reactor may cost tens of millions of yuan. "

In addition, the time cost is also very expensive. To speed up the purification of sewage and waste residue, it is necessary to expand the corresponding purification facilities. The greater the treatment capacity, the higher the price of purification equipment. "In the case of constant profits, enterprises can only try their best to strike a balance between environmental protection expenditures." Li Ran said.

"For so many years, we have been doing pollution control work, but we still feel that the effect is not satisfactory. On the one hand, the technical level is low, and many pollutants are discharged; On the other hand, the investment is large and the operating cost is high. Implementing green manufacturing is one of the ways to fundamentally solve the problem. " Zhang Daoxin said that the profit of bulk APIs is meager, and it is difficult for API enterprises to invest heavily in pollution treatment equipment and improve pollution control level. To achieve sustainable and stable emission standards, developing green production is the best scheme. For ecological maintenance, "decontamination" and environmental protection are palliative measures, and green production can cure the problem.

"Compared with foreign similar products, some of our products have different molecular structures. This difference leads to the need to use more raw materials to produce the same dose of drugs, and the pollution caused by this will naturally increase. Green manufacturing is to solve these problems through the improvement of source technology. " Zhang Daoxin said.

Zhang Daoxin emphasized that the pharmaceutical industry is a special industry, and the particularity of drugs itself determines that the process and system of this industry are very strict. Any change of manufacturing process must be declared, and a series of factors such as the time cost of the declaration process are one of the reasons why enterprises are reluctant to change processes easily. "I expect relevant government departments to consider opening up a green channel, encourage enterprises that carry out cleaner production to declare through the green channel, give certain policy support to process upgrading, and actively advocate cleaner production." Zhang Daoxin said.