Safe and Sustainable by Design for Chemicals and Materials

1. What Is Safe and Sustainable by Design for Chemicals and Materials?

Safe and Sustainable by Design, commonly abbreviated as SSbD, is a decision framework for designing and evaluating chemicals and materials across their life cycles. It aims to prevent harmful properties and exposures at the design stage while reducing environmental impacts without sacrificing the function the chemical or material must perform.

SSbD is both an innovation framework and an assessment framework. It encourages teams to eliminate hazards through molecular, formulation, process, and product choices before relying on exposure controls or end-of-pipe measures. Consultants and executives can use it to structure portfolio decisions, research priorities, stage gates, and operational improvement programs.

Its relevance is particularly strong where a chemical or material may perform well technically but create concerns during manufacturing, downstream use, recycling, or disposal. SSbD helps management compare alternatives without treating safety, environmental performance, cost, and functionality as unrelated workstreams.

2. Origin and Background

SSbD does not have a single individual creator. Its European policy foundation is the European Commission’s 2020 Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability, which called for criteria to guide the development of chemicals and materials that are safe and sustainable by design. The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre subsequently developed the technical framework through scientific review, stakeholder engagement, and case-study testing.

Commission Recommendation (EU) 2022/2510, adopted in December 2022, established a European assessment framework for safe and sustainable chemicals and materials. The Recommendation positioned SSbD as a voluntary approach supporting research, innovation, and investment decisions. It does not replace obligations under chemicals, occupational-safety, environmental, waste, or product-specific legislation.

The framework was created to address a recurring weakness in conventional development: functionality, safety, environmental impacts, and commercial considerations were often assessed sequentially by different teams. Problems discovered late could require expensive reformulation, process modification, or withdrawal of an otherwise promising candidate. SSbD brings these considerations forward and makes them part of iterative design.

The framework continues to be tested and refined through practical applications. Organizations should therefore use the current European Commission and Joint Research Centre guidance rather than treating the original framework as a permanently fixed scoring system.

3. How Safe and Sustainable by Design for Chemicals and Materials Works

SSbD begins with a clearly defined function. A team might require corrosion protection, flame resistance, adhesion, conductivity, or barrier performance. Candidate chemicals or materials are then designed and compared against that function, a reference solution, and explicit safety and environmental criteria.

The framework combines two connected activities: applying design principles while alternatives are still being developed, and conducting a structured assessment as evidence becomes available. The process is iterative. An unfavorable assessment should trigger redesign, substitution, process changes, tighter specifications, or reconsideration of the intended application.

Design principles

The European framework identifies principles that should shape design choices, including:

• Using materials efficiently and avoiding unnecessary chemical complexity.
• Minimizing hazardous substances and materials.
• Designing energy-efficient production and use.
• Using renewable sources where this produces a credible life-cycle benefit.
• Preventing hazardous emissions and reducing exposure.
• Designing for reuse, recycling, recovery, or safer end-of-life treatment.
• Considering impacts across the complete life cycle rather than shifting them between stages.

The four assessment steps

1. Hazard assessment. Evaluate the intrinsic properties of the chemical or material, including relevant human-health, environmental, and physical hazards. Composition, impurities, transformation products, and material form can all matter.
2. Production and processing safety. Examine occupational exposure and safety during synthesis, formulation, handling, processing, maintenance, and foreseeable incidents.
3. Final-application safety. Assess exposure and risk for users, consumers, workers, and the environment during the intended application and relevant service life.
4. Environmental sustainability. Use life-cycle information to identify environmental burdens associated with raw materials, production, distribution, use, and end of life.

The sequence is important. A favorable carbon or circularity profile should not be used to average away a serious hazard. Equally, intrinsic hazard alone does not provide a complete comparison when material form, exposure, performance, process conditions, and life-cycle impacts differ materially.

The natural unit of analysis is usually a chemical, material, formulation, or technology route in a defined application. The same substance may require different assessments when used in a closed industrial process, a consumer spray, a medical application, or a material expected to release particles during use.

4. When to Use Safe and Sustainable by Design for Chemicals and Materials

SSbD is most useful while meaningful design choices remain open. Relevant decisions include selecting feedstocks, solvents, additives, catalysts, coatings, polymers, material architectures, process routes, and end-of-life pathways. It is especially powerful when embedded in product development rather than applied as a final compliance review.

Typical business questions include:

• Which candidate formulation provides the required performance without introducing unacceptable hazards?
• Should an incumbent substance be substituted, and could the substitute create a regrettable trade-off?
• Where should research funding be directed across competing chemistry or material platforms?
• What safety and life-cycle evidence is required before a candidate passes the next development gate?
• Which portfolio products warrant redesign because of exposure, regulatory, supply, or end-of-life concerns?

Useful inputs include composition and impurity data; physicochemical, toxicological, and ecotoxicological evidence; process conditions; worker and user exposure scenarios; emissions and waste flows; supply-chain information; life-cycle inventories; technical-performance results; and assumptions about recovery or disposal. Procurement, research and development, toxicology, process engineering, product stewardship, regulatory affairs, manufacturing, and commercial teams normally need to contribute.

SSbD is less suitable as a rapid stand-alone screen for a transaction or as a substitute for legally required risk assessment. It can also mislead when teams compare candidates with different functions, rely on speculative recycling scenarios, overlook impurities or degradation products, or treat missing evidence as proof of safety.

The method works best when the intended function, reference alternative, system boundary, use conditions, and decision thresholds are explicit. Early screens may take place with limited data, but important investment or launch decisions require progressively stronger evidence and transparent treatment of uncertainty.

5. How to Apply Safe and Sustainable by Design for Chemicals and Materials: Step-by-Step

1. Clarify the decision and scope. State whether the decision concerns molecular design, formulation selection, process technology, product substitution, or portfolio investment. Define the application, performance requirements, geography, life-cycle boundary, time horizon, and reference solution.
2. Gather the required inputs. Assemble available hazard studies, computational predictions, read-across evidence, exposure data, process-flow information, life-cycle inventories, technical test results, supplier declarations, and regulatory classifications. Record evidence quality and important gaps rather than blending them into a single score.
3. Define the units of analysis. Compare functionally equivalent candidates. Specify composition ranges, relevant impurities, physical form, production route, application, and end-of-life scenario. A broad material family is usually too imprecise for a decision-grade assessment.
4. Construct the assessment artifact. Build a candidate-by-criterion dashboard covering design principles and the four assessment steps. Show exclusions or critical concerns separately from comparative indicators. Include evidence confidence, assumptions, unresolved tests, and the development gate at which each question must be answered.
5. Analyze and interpret the results. Identify hazards that should trigger elimination or redesign, exposure hotspots that may be engineered out, and environmental burdens shifted between life-cycle stages. Distinguish a genuine improvement from an outcome produced by favorable boundaries, unsupported assumptions, or incomplete data.
6. Translate findings into choices. Decide which candidates to stop, reformulate, test further, or advance. Convert the assessment into research briefs, supplier requirements, capital requests, process controls, and launch conditions. Where the findings alter platform priorities, they should inform the organization’s R&D strategy.
7. Test sensitivities. Recalculate conclusions under different energy mixes, feedstock sources, yields, production scales, service lives, exposure assumptions, and end-of-life pathways. Test whether the preferred candidate remains attractive if recycling does not occur or laboratory performance declines at industrial scale.
8. Align stakeholders and iterate. Review the evidence with scientists, engineers, product stewards, operations leaders, procurement, and business owners. Resolve differences about functionality and boundaries explicitly. Update the assessment as analytical data, pilot results, supplier information, and manufacturing experience become available.

6. Example: Safe and Sustainable by Design for Chemicals and Materials in Action

Business context

A fictional specialty-chemicals producer, Northbridge Coatings, is developing a protective coating for industrial equipment. The incumbent product performs reliably, but customers increasingly request alternatives with lower worker-exposure concerns and improved end-of-life compatibility. Management must choose among three development candidates before funding pilot production.

Application

The team defines the unit of analysis as each complete coating formulation in the same application, including its manufacturing route, application method, curing conditions, expected service life, and removal process. Technical performance and durability are treated as minimum functional requirements rather than optional sustainability indicators.

Hazard screening identifies a substance of concern in one candidate, leading the team to stop that route rather than attempting to offset the issue with favorable environmental metrics. A second candidate passes the initial screen but requires a volatile process aid that creates an occupational-exposure hotspot during mixing and application. The third avoids that process aid but initially requires more energy during curing.

Process engineers redesign the second candidate’s mixing step, while researchers test a lower-temperature curing system for the third. The life-cycle comparison includes feedstock production, plant energy, application losses, service life, maintenance frequency, and plausible disposal routes. Unproven recycling is shown as a sensitivity rather than assumed in the base case.

Decision and action

Northbridge advances the redesigned third candidate because it meets the required durability, avoids the most significant hazard and exposure concerns, and performs better under realistic life-cycle assumptions. Management funds pilot trials, establishes supplier data requirements, and adds SSbD evidence checkpoints to its development process. The resulting portfolio choices also become part of a broader sustainability strategy rather than remaining an isolated technical exercise.

7. Strengths and Limitations

Strengths

• Prevention at source. SSbD favors eliminating hazards through design rather than managing them indefinitely through controls.
• Integrated decisions. It brings chemistry, engineering, exposure, life-cycle performance, and business requirements into one development conversation.
• Earlier visibility. Teams can identify potential failure modes before scale-up, qualification, customer adoption, or capital commitment.
• Trade-off transparency. The framework exposes burden shifting, such as reducing direct emissions while increasing upstream resource use.
• Common governance. It provides a consistent structure for stage gates, portfolio reviews, supplier engagement, and investment decisions.

Limitations

SSbD can be data-intensive, particularly for novel substances, advanced materials, impurities, degradation products, and emerging production routes. Computational methods and read-across can support early screening, but they do not eliminate uncertainty.

Life-cycle results depend heavily on boundaries, allocation methods, production scale, electricity assumptions, service life, and end-of-life behavior. Laboratory data may not represent industrial yields or emissions, while theoretical circularity may not reflect available collection and recycling infrastructure.

The framework also does not remove difficult value judgments. Candidates may differ across hazard, exposure, climate, resource, durability, cost, and performance dimensions. An undisciplined aggregate score can hide a critical concern. Decision rules, non-negotiable thresholds, and uncertainty must remain visible.

Finally, SSbD is not a commercial business case or implementation plan. A scientifically preferred option may require new equipment, supplier qualification, customer testing, intellectual property, or higher production costs. Those consequences must be assessed separately before commitment.

8. Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

• Starting after the design is frozen. Late assessment turns SSbD into documentation. Introduce screening before chemistry, formulation, and process choices become expensive to reverse.
• Comparing unlike functions. A material that requires more frequent replacement is not equivalent merely because its unit-mass impacts are lower. Use a functional unit reflecting actual performance and service life.
• Ignoring material form. Powders, embedded particles, liquids, and cured matrices can create different exposure conditions. Define the relevant form at each life-cycle stage.
• Equating compliance with safety. Regulatory compliance is essential but may not address every emerging hazard or future portfolio risk. Use SSbD prospectively while maintaining formal compliance processes.
• Assuming missing data are favorable. Data gaps can make an option appear artificially attractive. Label uncertainty, require targeted testing, and apply precaution proportionate to the decision.
• Using optimistic circularity claims. Design for recycling has limited value if collection, separation, or reprocessing is implausible. Test realistic base cases and show aspirational scenarios separately.
• Collapsing everything into one score. Aggregation can obscure serious hazards. Preserve exclusion criteria, critical thresholds, and category-level results.
• Stopping at assessment. Assign owners, milestones, tests, investment decisions, and stage-gate consequences so findings change development behavior.

9. How Safe and Sustainable by Design for Chemicals and Materials Relates to Other Frameworks

Life-cycle assessment

Life-cycle assessment evaluates environmental impacts across a defined product system and forms an important part of SSbD’s environmental-sustainability assessment. SSbD is broader: it adds intrinsic hazard, occupational exposure, final-use risk, and preventive design logic. A team should not use life-cycle assessment alone to declare a chemical safe.

Alternatives assessment

Alternatives assessment compares substitutes for a chemical or technology, typically considering hazards, exposure, performance, and feasibility. It is particularly useful when replacing an existing substance. SSbD is often broader and earlier, guiding the design of new candidates as well as substitution decisions. The two approaches can use the same evidence base.

Stage-Gate

Stage-Gate governs progression from idea through development, testing, scale-up, and launch. It does not specify how chemical safety or sustainability should be assessed. SSbD criteria can be embedded within each gate so evidence requirements increase with technical and financial commitment.

Multi-criteria decision analysis

Multi-criteria decision analysis helps teams compare options across multiple dimensions and make weighting assumptions explicit. It can support SSbD when several acceptable candidates remain, but it should not allow favorable cost or carbon performance to compensate mathematically for an unacceptable hazard.

Risk assessment

Traditional risk assessment evaluates hazard together with exposure for defined uses. SSbD uses this logic but emphasizes prevention and redesign earlier in innovation. Detailed regulatory risk assessment remains necessary where required; SSbD does not replace it.

10. Key Takeaways

• SSbD integrates preventive design, chemical safety, exposure, and life-cycle environmental performance.
• It is most valuable before formulations, processes, suppliers, and capital choices become difficult to change.
• The relevant unit is a defined chemical or material in a defined function and application—not an abstract substance name.
• Serious hazard concerns should remain visible rather than being averaged away by favorable sustainability indicators.
• Reliable application requires cross-functional evidence, transparent assumptions, and progressive testing as development advances.
• SSbD guides decisions but does not replace regulatory compliance, a commercial business case, or implementation planning.

11. FAQs About Safe and Sustainable by Design for Chemicals and Materials

Is Safe and Sustainable by Design mandatory?

The European SSbD framework was introduced as a voluntary framework for research, innovation, and investment decisions. It does not replace mandatory chemicals, workplace-safety, environmental, or product requirements. Organizations should nevertheless verify current jurisdictional and funding-program requirements.

How is SSbD different from life-cycle assessment?

Life-cycle assessment focuses on environmental impacts across a product system. SSbD incorporates life-cycle assessment but also evaluates intrinsic hazards, production and processing exposure, final-application risks, and design choices intended to prevent harm.

What is the minimum data needed for an SSbD assessment?

A useful initial screen requires a defined function, candidate composition, known impurities, available hazard information, intended production and use conditions, likely exposure routes, and a basic life-cycle map. Decision-grade assessments require stronger analytical, process, exposure, performance, and life-cycle evidence.

Can smaller chemical or materials businesses use SSbD?

Yes. A smaller business can begin with a concise candidate dashboard, existing supplier and regulatory data, targeted hazard screening, and a simplified life-cycle hotspot analysis. The assessment should expand in proportion to uncertainty, potential harm, development maturity, and investment at risk.

How should SSbD be incorporated into product development?

Use it as a series of progressively demanding stage gates. Early gates should screen hazards and design options; later gates should require measured exposure, pilot-process, performance, and life-cycle evidence. Each gate should specify which findings cause redesign, additional testing, or termination.