Plenary and Keynote Speakers

The European Green Deal (EGD) outlined a transformative vision for a climate-neutral and toxic-free environment. Central to this ambition is the Chemical Strategy for Sustainability (CSS), which mandates a shift toward chemicals and materials that are Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) across their entire life cycles. To operationalize this, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (EC-JRC) has developed a comprehensive framework for defining SSbD criteria and evaluation procedures, integrating environmental and human risk assessment with sustainability assessment based on life cycle assessment and its application to chemicals and materials.

This pioneering framework integrates safety, environmental sustainability, and socio-economic dimensions into a single rational procedure for the first time. By embedding life cycle thinking into the earliest stages of Research and Development (R&D), the framework ensures that sustainability is not an afterthought but a foundational requirement. Testing of the framework included numerous case studies to define alternative to POPs and to accompany innovation addressing safety and sustainability at a very early stage, while considering competitiveness aspects .

This work directly supports the recent European Commission (EC) Recommendation for a harmonized SSbD assessment framework (1). As the EC enters a dedicated testing phase, academic and stakeholder feedback remains the backbone for refining these scientific methods. This presentation discusses the lessons learnt fromcase studies and the critical actions needed to ensure SSbD becomes the standard for global chemical safety.