The European Commission, Directorate-General for Environment and DG Research & Innovation, organised virtually the 1stStakeholders Meeting on Safe-and-Sustainable-by-Design on 19 March 2021, since Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) is considered a key element to the transition to the Green Deal, moving to climate neutrality, zero pollution and circular economy. This first workshop aimed to start developing the criteria for SSbD implementation.
Thirteen presentations from different stakeholders were produced including European Commission RTD, ENV, various ministries (The Netherlands, Austria), OECD, EEA, Universities (Thessaloniki, Leuphana) and stakeholders such as CEFIC and Chemsec. The different presentations reviewed current proposals, starting from Safe-by-Design (NanoReg2 and TEMAS Solutions were mentioned).
With more than 500 participants, the workshop set the first steps towards the criteria definition, concept and planning and brought lots of information about the future process to further elaborate on the SSbD concept in the field of chemical risk assessment.
Key issues, currently not covered, were discussed, including the economic dimension, environmental footprint, or the 12 principles for Green Chemistry. Challenges such as working with non-European partners and educating relevant stakeholders were also discussed. As a summary Europe is moving towards the Green Deal, where toxic chemicals will not have a place, and circular economy is to be implemented. The question now is how we achieve our goals. The first step for the European Commission will be to launch a survey at the end of April 2021, based on the outcome of this workshop which will be open for one month. The main idea is to further collect stakeholder ideas and thoughts to allow us to move forwards with this initiative.
NanoPAT was represented in the event, as Blanca SuÃĄrez(from TEMASOL) will participate in the discussions contributing with her expertise in Safe- and Sustainable-by-Design (SSbD) to the workshop.
Watch the recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alXzLtwu8WE Â Â
If you are interested in follow up activities of SSbD, please register here as stakeholder: https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/9c66713d-15e4-b8ea-36b4-d5d1d8b471db
Stay tuned! In the coming weeks a survey to collect input for the SSbD methodology development will be launched.
