Sustainable products: Meeting emerging compliance goals
How is the drive for sustainable products affecting compliance strategies?
Building a sustainable future: The changing agenda of product compliance
As policymakers around the world work towards the development of sustainable products and a circular economy, the chemicals management agenda is changing. Safety professionals involved in sustainable product management and chemicals now have new compliance goals and circular economy regulations to meet.
Policy approaches such as safe and sustainable by design (SSbD) and extended producer responsibility (EPR) are cornerstones of the circular economy concept, which is driving the regulatory agenda of policy frameworks including the EU chemicals strategy for sustainability.
Why sustainable products?
Sustainability is key to winning and retaining business and to compete in a world where social and environmental issues command increased attention among regulatory authorities, investors and end consumers.
In this year’s Chemical Watch Chemical Management and Control Survey, sustainability is a strong driver of regulatory work for product safety professionals. Two-thirds of respondents cited the EU CSS as driving their work, with revision of the CLP and the UN sustainable development goals (SDGS) also rising in importance compared with previous years.
As the legislative agenda continues to grow, creating safer and sustainable products can help businesses:
- avoid costly substitutions after product launch;
- attract customers; and
- attract investors.
How is the circular economy influencing sustainable product compliance?
To create safe and sustainable products that meet circular economy regulations, compliance professionals are now expected to understand the full lifecycle of a product from start to end of life. Not only that, they play an important role and act as internal ambassadors to drive sustainability within their organizations and help the business achieve sustainable product management.
Sustainability means compliance now has to make sure the product delivers not just in terms of the safe use of chemicals and raw materials but in terms of the whole product lifecycle and the regulation around that. That’s become a higher profile issue.
Delwyn Evans Senior Principal Chemist, P2i, UKCompliance in a circular economy
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