Europe can’t make its own aspirin or paracetamol anymore.

Europe can’t make its own aspirin or paracetamol anymore. That should worry us.

This is the hot take Andreas Wagner pitched last week at “Hot Takes, Cooler Planet” during Munich Climate Week.

Both drugs depend on two simple base chemicals: acetic acid and acetic anhydride. They have mostly left Europe. Some of the most basic medicines we take now depend on supply chains thousands of kilometres away.

And there’s a climate cost too. The Chinese and US producers we rely on run with a higher carbon footprint than former European ones. Every box of painkillers carries emissions we chose to import.

So bringing this production back is not only about resilience. It’s also a climate decision.

That’s why we work on chemical recycling at Radical Dot. The building blocks Europe lost can come back from waste, produced locally.

Thanks Florian Schabus for the invite, and to Climate Founders, Planet A and better ventures for the evening.