Roche is committed to support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

Flip the cards and learn more about our activities to support the goals.

Goal 3

Good health and well-being

Improving global access to healthcare

Roche strives to substantially improve access to healthcare by creating private funding solutions for patients in countries where public funding is inadequate. For example, we work with various stakeholders to provide local insurance companies with data on cancer treatment and cost analysis. This enables them to launch affordable cancer policies. To date, our efforts have contributed to more than 20 types of insurance policies worldwide providing appropriate care for millions of people.

Speeding up development of better medicines

Roche is an active member of the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), Europe's largest public-private initiative for accelerating the development of better and safer medicines. IMI supports collaborative research projects and builds networks of industrial and academic experts in order to boost pharmaceutical innovation. While some if the initiative's projects focus on specific health issues such as Alzheimer’s or Ebola virus disease, others focus on broader challenges like antimicrobial resistance.

Quality healthcare for the most vulnerable

Roche has initiated the world's largest infant HIV testing programme featuring a dried blood sampling diagnostic technique. This overcomes challenges in countries with the greatest disease burden and the least resources. Partnering to combat HIV infections in children with organisations such as UNAIDS and the Clinton Health Access Initiative, we bring quality healthcare to the most vulnerable. Over seven million infants have been tested for HIV, thus giving many more children the chance to live a healthy life.

Goal 4

Quality education

Training talents to shape the future

Roche has been training young people since 1957. To date, 3,500 trainees have completed an apprenticeship at the Basel/Kaiseraugst site, where training in 14 different professions is now available. About 100 trainees begin an apprenticeship each year; over 98% pass the final exams. Roche has adopted a model whereby responsibilities are shared between three partners – the in-house training centre, on-the-job training supervisors, and the state-run vocational college. On a global comparison, this system is unique.

Goal 5

Gender equality

More women in leadership positions than ever before

Gender equality is not only a basic right but also enrichment for both society and companies. Roche's objectives include fostering equal opportunities, helping women reach leadership positions, and promoting flexible models for balancing family and career. At Roche today we have more women in leadership positions than ever before. We've steadily increased the percentage of women in senior leadership positions from 13% in 2009 to 28% in 2017, and have set ourselves the goal of increasing this rate to 29% by 2020.

Goal 6

Clean water and sanitation

Managing limited water resources

Our goal is to reduce water consumption per employee by 10% by 2020, with a special emphasis on water-stressed areas. To this end, all Roche sites are either working on or implementing programmes to increase efficiency in water usage. In the US, for example, the Genentech South San Francisco site is employing innovative approaches to reduce water withdrawal and improve wastewater management. Since 2016, this site has been reusing approximately 85% of the reverse osmosis reject water in its cooling towers.

Goal 7

Affordable and clean energy

Replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy

Roche requires energy for production processes, for heating and cooling, for transportation and business travel. We plan to increase the proportion of sustainable energy to 20% of total consumption by 2020. Longer term, our goal is to fully substitute fossil and nuclear energies. Our Genentech facility in Oceanside, US, helped to make substantial progress toward this goal by completing a solar panel array project in 2016. Today, the panels provide 22% of the site’s electrical power requirements.

Goal 8

Decent work and economic growth

Building the future

Roche invested CHF 290 million in an IT Innovation Center in Kaiseraugst, Switzerland, thereby initiating the site's development into one of the group's IT innovation hubs. Roche also opened a new Learning Center in Kaiseraugst. It offers leading-edge facilities for trainees and a state-of-the-art school laboratory, the first of its kind in Switzerland. Over the next 10 years, Roche will invest CHF 3 billion in Basel, including in the construction of a research and development centre for 1,900 employees.

Goal 9

Industry, innovation and infrastructure

A structure built for innovation

We have more than 20,000 employees working in research and development (R&D) and are consistently ranked among the top 10 investors in R&D across industries. Roche was one of the first healthcare companies to recognise the importance of external innovation and is currently running more than 200 partnerships. We collaborate with start-ups, biotech companies and distinguished scientists at leading institutions to drive the application of technology platforms that have the potential to transform discovery.

Goal 12

Responsible consumption and production

Less waste, more recycling

Since 2010, Roche has recycled the majority of its chemical waste internally. In terms of our production, we apply "green chemistry" to reduce the already low volumes of chemical waste. Our objective is to avoid disposal of chemical waste or other hazardous materials in landfills and we accept responsibility for all waste generated at our operations. In 2017, we continued our remediation programme at our previously used landfill site in Grenzach, Germany.

Goal 13

Climate action

Minimising our environment footprint

Being recognised as a leader for corporate action on climate change is a result of our commitment to protecting natural resources. Whether it concerns a manufacturing site, an active pharmaceutical ingredient or our supply chain, we seek to reduce our environmental footprint. Take our new office building in Basel, for example: this extremely energy-efficient structure is heated with waste heat and cooled with groundwater, while setting new energy performance standards with its efficient façade design and LED lighting.

Goal 16

Peace, justice and strong institutions

Fostering a global compliance culture

Integrity is at the heart of our business and our corporate culture. We believe that every employee has a responsibility to act with integrity, and we systematically anchor this principle in our culture. Above all, our Code of Conduct guides employees in terms of patient safety, product quality and open dialogue with all our stakeholders. In 2016, 120 employees used the Roche Group SpeakUp Line, which is available in 53 languages for reports relating to violations of the Code of Conduct.

Goal 17

Partnerships for the goals

Joining forces to tackle cancer in Kenya

Roche maintains various public-private partnerships to remove barriers to access and empower people worldwide to build the lives they want for themselves and their families. In 2016, an agreement signed between Roche and the Kenyan Ministry of Health heralded the start of activities that will facilitate access to improved care for breast cancer patients. These include awareness programmes, improvements in diagnostics, training for oncologists and nurses, and an increase in the number of cancer treatment centres.