Issue 13, 2024

Safe and sustainable chemicals and materials: a review of sustainability assessment frameworks

Abstract

In the context of the EU Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability, a key action regards the development of a framework to identify criteria for safe and sustainable by design chemicals and materials. The integration of safety and sustainability considerations is challenging, and this systematic review investigates how aspects pertaining to sustainability have been implemented in 155 frameworks proposed by scholars, industry, governments and non-governmental organizations. In particular, this review scrutinizes methods, models and indicators for environmental, social and economic aspects in frameworks combining multiple sustainability dimensions. Furthermore, the application of such frameworks to an early stage of chemicals and materials development was also analysed. The review unveiled that the majority of the frameworks are purely conceptual/theoretical, while some attempts are made by others towards providing methods and indicators for the assessment as well as operational procedure of decision support. Life cycle considerations are often remarked as necessary for evaluating the environmental sustainability of chemicals, climate change being the environmental impact mentioned by the majority of frameworks. Social sustainability aspects with quantitative indicators have been proposed only in a few studies so far. Another aspect often disregarded is data uncertainty. Although the reviewed frameworks showed several similarities in structure and aspects covered, indicators often differ significantly. Hence, using one framework instead of another might lead to a different outcome.

Graphical abstract: Safe and sustainable chemicals and materials: a review of sustainability assessment frameworks

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Critical Review
Submitted
24 Nov 2023
Accepted
11 Mar 2024
First published
31 May 2024
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Green Chem., 2024,26, 7456-7477

Safe and sustainable chemicals and materials: a review of sustainability assessment frameworks

C. Caldeira, E. Abbate, C. Moretti, L. Mancini and S. Sala, Green Chem., 2024, 26, 7456 DOI: 10.1039/D3GC04598F

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements