The new “Sustainability by Design” concept proposed by EU will transform the global chemical industry. The innovative framework aims to improve product safety, reduce emissions, mitigate climate change and enable circular economy right at the product design and development stage. The market driven approach will incentivise the use of safe chemicals instead of just regulating the hazardous ones.
Have you ever been curious about what goes into the toothpaste that we unfailingly use twice every day? In an idle moment, I recently read the fine print on the toothpaste carton and was stunned to count 22 ingredients. Among them were many chemicals – Sodium Fluoride, Zinc Oxide, Benzyl Alcohol, Sodium Lauryl Sulphate, Titanium Dioxide, Phosphoric Acid, Eugenol. My curiosity aroused, I scanned the packaging of shaving cream and counted 15 ingredients, most of them chemicals. A popular shampoo has 31 ingredients listed on the pack, again mostly chemicals. Every product we use is replete with dozens of chemicals. Chemicals are used in 96% of all manufactured products. Chemicals will continue to be the building blocks of novel materials and products that will enable the transition to a green and digital society.
Inventory of Chemicals
Surprisingly, there is no authoritative estimate of the number of industrial chemicals currently in use. The estimate varies between 25,000 and 140,000. Additionally, about 2000 new chemicals are unleashed into the market every year. The inventory list of US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) contains 84,000 chemicals. But many of these are either duplicates or are not currently in use. The Society of Chemical Manufacturers and Affiliates (SOCMA) estimates that there are about 25,000 chemicals in use commercially. However, an international study in 2020 reported that 350,000 chemicals are registered for production and use in different national and regional inventories.
Very little is known about 50,000 of these chemicals because they are classified as confidential to protect their IPR. Another 70,000 substances are complex materials with no
distinct chemical identity.
Strategy for Sustainability
Europe, the cradle of chemistry and chemical industry, has unveiled an ambitious action plan for regulating chemicals. The policy promises to profoundly reshape the chemical industry. Called “Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability” (CSS), the long term vision of the policy is to ensure that chemicals are produced and used in a way that maximises their contribution to society, while avoiding harm to the planet and to current and future generations. The policy outlines a roadmap and timeline to transform the chemical industry towards attracting investment into safe and sustainable products and processes. The cornerstone of EU’s action plan is the overarching concept of “safe and sustainable by design”.In due course of time, safety and sustainability of chemicals under this framework will become essential prerequisites for market entry.
Safe and Sustainable
by Design REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals) and CLP (Classification, Labelling and Packaging), the two principal pieces of legislation regulating chemicals in the EU do not explicitly talk about safety or sustainability. Their primary intent is to safeguard human health and environment. The concept of “safe and sustainable by design” seeks to improve product safety, prevent pollution, mitigate climate change and promote circular economy at the product design and development stage.
Broadening the Scope
As a first step in the implementation of this path-breaking initiative, a mapping study was undertaken in April to develop criteria for “safe and sustainable by design”. The study examined the current best practices of sustainability to see if and how they can be adapted to develop the new criteria. REACH does not define “chemicals”, but instead uses terms like “substance” and “mixture”. While appropriating these 2 terms to define “chemicals”, the mapping study also expanded its scope to include “materials”, which are not covered by REACH. Whereas chemicals are standalone entities, materials infuse functional properties into products through their chemical and physical properties. This broad-based definition and scope is of vital significance to cover the many technologies and products that are emerging from the laboratories to combat climate change.
Sustainability Criteria
One of the major conclusions of this mapping study was that chemicals are currently addressed in terms of hazards to human health or the environment and not many criteria are available to cover other sustainability aspects like the way they are produced or treated at their end-of-life. The study has come out with an initial framework of “sustainable-by-design” criteria to be adopted during the product and process development stage. The criteria are structured under 3 heads – production stage, use stage and end-of-life. The criteria proposed under “production stage” are sustainable sourcing of raw materials / use of natural materials, recycled material content, resource consumption, emissions and waste management. Under the “use stage”, the suggested criteria are functionality (fitness for use), durability and reparability. The “end-of-life” criteria are recyclability and waste. The next step would be to develop the methodology for applying these criteria and is proposed to be taken up later this year. The criteria for “safe and sustainable by design” are expected to be fully in place by 2022.
Nanomaterials
The study lavishes considerable attention on nanomaterials and nano- enabled products. This is only o be expected as many of the new age materials that are emerging from the laboratories belong to this class. The study provides a bird’s eye overview of a host of
protocols, platforms and tools already available for the “safe-by-design” development of nanomaterials. A slew of ongoing projects has already built up a knowledge base that should stand in good stead for developing and amplifying “sustainable-by-design” concepts
for nanotechnology products. Some of the available frameworks for development of nanomaterials take into account not only safety aspects, but also factor in sustainability considerations by using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tools. However, nanomaterials are
fraught with challenges of complexity and confidentiality.
Epilogue
There was a time when cost was the single most criterion for design. As competition matured, distinguishing features like aesthetics, user-friendliness and safety emerged. With the awakening of environmental consciousness came the concept of recyclability and waste. Sustainability-by-design takes a holistic approach and incorporates all of these criteria under a single umbrella. But sustainability is a far broader and poorly definable concept. The concept also represents a paradigm shift because it is a market driven approach that incentivises production and use of safe chemicals instead of only regulating hazardous ones. As the decade progresses, it may well become the yardstick for funneling ESG funds into research and innovation in chemicals.
Readers’ responses may be sent to:
k.sahasranaman@gmail.com or
chemindigest@gmail.com
