Survey of SETAC Members on the Green Deal: Chemical Strategy of Sustainability

Michelle Bloor, University of Glasgow; Annegaaike Leopold, Calidris Environment; Carla Patinha-Caldeira, European Commission, Joint Research Centre; and Joanke Van Dijk, Utrecht University

The organizing committee of the Green Deal special session at the SETAC Europe 31st Annual Meeting would like to invite you to complete a survey to gather SETAC members’ thoughts and opinions on topics connected to the Green Deal’s Chemical Strategy for Sustainability, as an extension of the Green Deal survey that was undertaken in 2020. The special session included a summary of the 2020 Green Deal discussion forum and the subsequent Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management publication, and five pre-recorded presentations from an invited panel of experts:

• Serenella Sala, European Commission Joint Research Centre, spoke about the Life Cycle Assessment approach being taken to ensure that chemicals are designed for sustainability.
• Leo Posthuma, RIVM, and Martin Wimmer, Austrian Federal Ministry, shared their vision to join forces to promote sustainable chemicals-based products within a non-toxic environment, addressing the EU-regulatory perspective and bridging perspectives across the worlds of chemistry, chemical safety assessment, life cycle assessment and field ecological impact.
• Dominique Debecker, Solvay, presented on the whole life cycle of chemicals and the social dimension.
• Jean-Luc Wietor, European Environmental Bureau, reviewed a case study discussing how the policies proposed in the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability would help to address real life situations.
• Ian Malcomber, Unilever, provided the point of view of a consumer-facing company on some opportunities and challenges presented by the European Green Deal.

During the live event, the invited panel of experts and the 420 delegates that attended the special session discussed five questions outlined below. The questions had been collected prior to the annual meeting from SETAC members, the wider scientific community and the general public through a social media campaign.

• How would you define criteria for safe and sustainable-by-design chemicals, and how should these criteria be implemented?
• How is the polluter-pays principle implemented when there are so many unstudied effects of known substances, and we assume non-toxicity for non-assessment endpoints, while we raise concerns about unknown contaminants for which there is no known polluter to be held responsible?
• How can we balance the effectiveness of a chemical(s) (i.e., its usefulness in products vs. its sustainability or environmental impacts)?
• How can we trust scientists, validators or industry (who are prone to conflicts of interest), without open reviews of the studies untampered raw data?
• What can be done about the large amount of down-the-drain chemicals, such as pharmaceuticals, that are episodically emitted due to extreme weather events, for example via sewer overflows?

The data collected from the survey will be used to form the basis of a peer-reviewed publication, along with the transcripts from the special session live discussion that took place on 3 May. The special session recording and pre-recorded presentations by the expert panel are available for registered attendees to watch on the annual meeting platform until August 2021.

Author’s contact information: [email protected]