Safe-and-sustainable-by-design chemicals and advanced materials: a paradigm shift towards prevention-based risk governance is needed

Abstract

The Green Deal aims at transforming the European economy for safer and more sustainable chemicals, materials, processes and products. The goal is to encourage technological progress, while maximizing health and environmental protection as part of an ambitious approach to tackle pollution from all sources and move towards a toxic-free environment. To be able to fulfil these policy ambitions, the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability and the Zero Pollution Action Plan describe the need for a paradigm shift towards prevention-based risk governance via a transition towards safe-and-sustainable-by-design (SSbD). The SSbD approach pro-actively ensures that safety, functionality and sustainability are embedded in the early design stages of new chemicals, materials and products. This is opposed to the current regulatory paradigm that retro-actively imposes measures to mitigate risks/impacts once the products are already on the market. The complexity of advanced materials, their enabling nature, as well as the roles of the different stakeholders involved in the risk governance process result in significant difficulties to define any trade-offs among safety, functionality and sustainability when it comes to developing and regulating new materials and products. Defining metrics of these fundamental aspects and integrating them for decision making cannot be a technocratic task – it should be a co-creative process that involves key actors along entire supply chains of production and downstream use and balances the perspectives of stakeholders from industry, regulation and policy. The establishment of such an ecosystem of actors and the application of approaches from decision science as well as digital tools can provide a significant contribution towards the practical operationalization of SSbD and can support the ongoing policy transition towards prevention-based risk governance of chemicals and advanced materials.