Industrial operationalisation of safe-and-sustainable-by-design from business case to launch

Abstract

The chemical industry stands at a pivotal crossroads in the global transition towards sustainability. While chemical industry creates essential innovations, it has high environmental impact, and must reimagine its operations, products, and value chains to meet the demands of a rapidly evolving regulatory and societal landscape. The safe-and-sustainable-by-design (SSbD) framework, especially in its latest revision, nudges chemical industry towards the embedding of sustainability and safety in innovation processes and facilitate having bridges between safety and sustainability experts. The SSbD approach supports the deployment of EU policies such as the Competitive Compass, The Green Deal and the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability. While JRC has coined the term “SSbD framework”, the underlying principles are not new—the framework adds more rigor to practices that industry has long implemented through PSA and other risk-based methodologies. Yet, translating these principles into consistent practice across the sector remains a challenge. The practical implementation of SSbD principles remains uneven, with significant variation in how companies cover and operationalise SSbD principles. Here, we compare industrial practices across the chemical sector, including specialty chemicals, consumer products, and materials manufacturing, focusing on their internal guidelines and reporting structures to assess how SSbD approach is integrated, aligned with, or differs from these practices. These industrial practices offer valuable lessons in integrating sustainability into business strategy, managing trade-offs, and aligning current or future market and regulatory expectations. At the same time, we identify key gaps in existing SSbD approach, including the inconclusive integration of social dimensions, and a lack of practical tools for early-stage decision-making. We argue that a highly iterative, industry-informed SSbD guidance—grounded in real-world constraints and opportunities—is essential to accelerate adoption and impact of the revised SSbD framework. By bridging policy ambition and industrial reality, this article contributes to the ongoing developments in SSbD implementation in research and development processes.