Abstract
The EU Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability is a first step to achieve the Green Deal ambition for a toxic-free environment, and ensure that chemicals are produced and used in a way that maximises their contribution to society while avoiding harm to our planet and to future generations. Advanced materials are predicted to play a pivotal role in achieving this ambition and the underlying sustainability goals, and considerable efforts are invested in designing new classes of materials. Examples of such materials are metamaterials, artificially architectured materials designed to have material properties beyond those of the individual ingredient materials, or active materials at the boundary between materials and devices (e.g., new biomedical soft materials). Such innovative advanced materials raise concern about possible future safety and sustainability issues and would benefit from appropriate risk governance that promotes innovation, while pushing for safety and sustainability. To balance these aspects, a methodology is proposed for the early-stage identification of emerging safety and sustainability issues of advanced materials. As exemplified by two case studies, the methodology aims to be of use for innovators, risk assessors, and regulators. Extension of the methodology is highlighted, as well as implementation in broader initiatives like the EU's industrial policy approach.
Highlights
The European Green Deal (GD), the European Union's new growth strategy (EC, 2019a), has set the EU on an urgent course to become a sustainable climate neutral and circular economy by 2050
This approach can be applied by both regulators and innovators. The goal of this systematic approach is the early identification of health, environmental and sustainability issues to support the Safe-andSustainable by Design (SSbD) development, production, use, and end-oflife treatment of advanced materials
Step 1: inventory of state of the art. This initial key step in an analysis to identify future safety and sus tainability issues involves a general inventory of the latest developments within the broad field of innovative materials and innovative technol ogies, new applications of existing materials/substances due to new technologies or new manufacturing processes which can lead to new use pattern and possible new risks, and consists of two activities: 1a) Scan the field to obtain an indication of the latest advancements in nanotechnology pertaining to advanced materials through peri odic scanning of the scientific literature, news sites, websites, elec tronic databases and stakeholder networks
Summary
The European Green Deal (GD), the European Union's new growth strategy (EC, 2019a), has set the EU on an urgent course to become a sustainable climate neutral and circular economy by 2050. This approach can be applied by both regulators and innovators The goal of this systematic approach is the early identification of health, environmental and sustainability issues to support the Safe-andSustainable by Design (SSbD) development, production, use, and end-oflife treatment of advanced materials. This is important to fully exploit the innovation potential of advanced materials and to warrant that po tential health, safety and sustainability issues are identified in an as early stage of development as possible.
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