Safe and sustainable by design chemicals and materials : application of the SSbD framework to case studies

This report presents the first application of the European Commission (EC) Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) framework in a case study, on plasticisers in food contact material. Both the SSbD framework and the case study were developed by the EC's Joint Research Centre. The case study was undertaken to elucidate possibilities for further refinements of the SSbD framework, and to enable its wider application to support innovation for safety and sustainability. Furthermore, two more case studies were developed in parallel by the industry, one that assessed flame retardants (halogen-free) in information and communications technology products, and one that focused on surfactants in textiles. Lessons learned and challenges were extracted from the case studies. A main challenge relates to lack of publicly available data in all steps of the assessment, as well as databases to act as repositories for this data. For example, for the safety aspects in Step 1 data used for classification purposes is Business Confidential Information, in Step 2 the manufacturing and processing are very company specific processes, or in Step 3 product/application specific and very often confidential information as well. For the life cycle assessment, detailed data regarding the production processes is required and it was not possible to obtain it from companies neither in general life cycle databases. Furthermore, data quality and uncertainty is important, and need to be addressed. It was noted that the integration of different disciplines (e.g. risk assessment, lifecycle assessment) enables a very comprehensive assessment, however such expertise is not easily found pointing out for the need of training on SSbD to develop the necessary skills. Nevertheless, the assessment is complex and requires the assessor(s) to have expertise in various fields, which can be particularly challenging for small and medium enterprises. A need was identified for additional case studies to support further developments towards operationalization of the EC SSbD framework, including its alignment with companies design and innovation processes. Additionally, to successfully implement the SSbD framework it is key to develop a system enabling the communication along the supply chain of the information necessary to conduct the assessment.