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Key actions to innovate for safe and sustainable EU chemicals: Achieving safe products and non-toxic material cycles?

In a clean circular economy it is essential to boost the production and uptake of secondary raw materials and ensure that both primary and secondary materials and products are always safe. The recently adopted circular economy action plan has shown that this requires a combination of actions upstream, to ensure that products are safe and sustainable-by-design, and downstream, to increase safety of and trust in recycled materials and products. However, the creation of a well-functioning market for secondary raw materials and the transition to safer materials and products is being slowed down by a number of issues, in particular the lack of adequate information on the chemical content of products. Consumers, value chain actors as well as waste operators therefore cannot make informed choices.

To move towards toxic-free material cycles and clean recycling and ensure that “Recycled in the EU” becomes a benchmark worldwide, it is necessary to ensure that substances of concern in products and recycled materials are minimised. As a principle, the same limit value for hazardous substances should apply for virgin and recycled material. However, there may be exceptional circumstances where a derogation to this principle may be necessary. This would be under the condition that the use of the recycled material is limited to clearly defined applications where there is no negative impact on consumer health and the environment, and where the use of recycled material compared to virgin material is justified on the basis of a case by case analysis.

Regulatory actions need to go hand-in-hand with increased investments in innovative technologies to address the presence of legacy substances in waste streams, which could in turn allow to recycle more waste. This is particularly important for certain plastics and textiles. Sustainable innovations and technologies will have to be developed for this purpose. Technologies such as chemical recycling could also have a role but only if they ensure an overall positive environmental and climate performance, from a full life cycle perspective.

NON-TOXIC MATERIAL CYCLES

The Commission will:

  • minimise the presence of substances of concern in products by introducing  requirements, also as part of the Sustainable Product Policy Initiative, giving priority to those product categories that affect vulnerable populations as well as those with the highest potential for circularity, such as textiles, packaging including food packaging, furniture, electronics and ICT, construction and buildings;
  • ensure availability of information on chemical content and safe use, by introducing information requirements in the context of the Sustainable Product Policy Initiative and tracking the presence of substances of concern through the life cycle of materials and products;
  • ensure that authorisations and derogations from restrictions for recycled materials under REACH are exceptional and justified;
  • support investments in sustainable innovations that can decontaminate waste streams, increase safe recycling and reduce the export of waste, in particular plastics and textiles;
  • develop methodologies for chemical risk assessment that take into account the whole life cycle of substances, materials and products.

 Source: European Commission

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