Existing SSbD Frameworks

The concept of safety and sustainability by design has been examined within the EU borders for quite some time now. Five documentations have been published already, with the proposed approaches for the SSbD framework.

1. The Joint Research Centre (JRC) of European Commission has published the Technical Report on “Safe and Sustainable by Design chemicals and materials” in 2022. (https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/)
2. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has published in 2022 the document “Sustainability and Safe and Sustainable by Design: Working Descriptions for the Safer Innovation Approach.” (https://www.oecd.org/officialdocuments/)
3. The European Chemical Industry Council (cefic) has published its views on “Safe and sustainable-by-design: Boosting innovation and growth within the European Chemical Industry” in 2021. (https://cefic.org/app/uploads/2021/09/Safe-and-Sustainable-by-Design)
4. The European Environmental Agency (EEA) has published the document “Designing safe and sustainable products requires a new approach for chemicals” in 2020. (https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/designing-safe-and-sustainable)
5. The International Chemical Secretariat (chemsec) has published in 2021 its view on the Safe and Sustainable by Design Chemicals focusing on the criteria. (https://chemsec.org/publication/chemical-strategy/)

 The five approaches can be divided into the policy/regulatory perspective (JRC, EEA, OECD) and the industry perspective (cefic, chemsec).

A new EC recommendation document on the SSbD assessment framework is being under development and expected to be published at the end of 2022, which will contain enough information for the implementation of the JRC framework by the industry. The recommendation will be addressed to member states, industry, academia and research and technologies organisations.