The Green Deal sets up ambitious roadmaps for increasing EU sovereignty while promoting safer and more sustainable approaches. The SSbD framework published by JRC and adopted by the Commission proposes an approach to evaluate the safety, environmental, and socio/economic dimensions of molecules, materials and processes. The applicability of this framework is currently being tested under different typologies of products and maturity levels. PLANETS will demonstrate the applicability of the framework while technically developing alternatives for 3 of the most important classes of molecules in chemical industries (plasticizers, flame retardants and surfactants) at TRL 6 and their incorporation into broadly available consumer goods at TRL7. The new molecules and products will be significantly safer to workers and consumers and will have considerably lower environmental impact, while ensuring economic viability and social awareness throughout the 3 value chains (VC). PLANETS consortium brings together 18 complementary partners from 7 countries, including 8 large companies and 2 SMEs, covering the 3 complete VC, 5 RTO and the 3 non-profit organizations. These actors will bring the expertise required for all the project development: - Development of safer and more sustainable alternatives through SSbD assessments in a tiered approach. - Demonstration of the integration of the new molecules for the manufacturing of new products for various applications (coating, insulation foams and childcare articles). - Social and humanities sciences. - Business plans and market uptake approaches. - Digital Product Passport. - Identification of new skills and training. - Interactions with appropriate stakeholders and citizens and feedback to JRC and the EC. PLANETS ambitions are to strongly contribute to pave the road for the adoption of SSbD framework while proposing a roadmap towards industrialisation and market uptake of the alternative solutions.

Engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) are covered by REACH/CLP regulations; the general opinion is that the risk assessment (RA) approach routinely used for conventional chemicals is also applicable to ENMs. However, as acknowledged by OECD and ECHA, the OECD and ISO Test Guidelines (TGs) and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) need to be verified and adapted to be applicable to ENMs. RiskGONE will support the standardization and validation process for ENM by evaluating, optimizing and pre-validating SOPs and TGs and integrating them into a framework for risk governance (RG) of ENMs. The framework will comprise modular tools and will rely heavily on current strategies for the RA of conventional chemicals, complemented by methods for estimating environmental, social and economic benefits. It will incorporate ethical aspects and societal risk perception and will manage acceptable and unacceptable risks through transfer or mitigation. The focus of RiskGONE will be to produce nano-specific draft guidance documents for application to ENM RA; or, alternatively, to suggest ameliorations to OECD, ECHA, and ISO/CEN SOPs or guidelines. Rather than producing assays and methods ex novo, this will be achieved through Round Robin exercises and multimodal testing of OECD TGs and ECHA methods supporting the “Malta-project”, and on methods not yet considered by OECD. This process will be accelerated by guidance documents for data storage/curation/accessibility optimisation, applied to well-characterized reference ENMs typifying the main physicochemical and toxicological features of ENMs. The conditions for a transparent and self-sustained organisational form for science-based RG, representing EU stakeholders, member states, industry and civil society, will be established. The RG framework and methods developed by RiskGONE will be transferred to the organisational form for RG.

The AlchemiSSts project will demonstrate the applicability of the Safe by Design (SSbD) framework aiming at developing and implementing safer and more sustainable alternatives to surfactants, plasticizers, and flame retardants that, being present in daily life products pose a high risk for the human health and the environment, thus considered substances of very high concern (SVHC). To this end, up to seven case studies, accounting with the relevant actors in the value chain are proposed in the project, and they will serve as proof of concept to test the SSbD framework against within its different 5 steps. The general objective of the project will be achieved by addressing specific goals such as the development of the alternative substances itself, the compilation of robust and reliable evidence for a Proof of Concept of the SSbD framework, the development of a certification methodology promoting the implementation of the SSbD concept in the industrial network. Another key pillar of AlchemiSSts project relies on the implementation of integrated approaches and tools to support safety, sustainability and social assessment based on interoperable FAIR data and models. In addition, robust data on sustainability indicators and information for assessing the impact of the outcomes of the project towards a suite of zero pollution targets will be delivered for each case. For all these relevant aspects, AlchemiSSts will be assisted by stakeholders to ensure social acceptance and economic of the foreseen innovative advance materials.

The unique properties of nanomaterials (NMs), relative to their bulk form, has seen them used in a rapidly increasing number of commercial applications. However, with these useful new properties of NMs come potential health and environmental hazards. Thus, as part of a responsible innovation approach, NMs potential risks must be assessed in parallel to exploitation of their benefits. Due to their enormous variability, NM risk assessment urgently needs advanced in silico methodologies capable of machine learning from limited experimental datasets. These in silico tools for NMs characterisation, exposure, hazard and risk assessment and sustainability and life cycle assessment, need to support implementation of existing regulatory guidelines and extend regulatory risk assessment to integrate the extensive new knowledge generated computationally. CompSafeNano’s overarching objective is thus to drive the development of integrated and universally applicable nanoinformatics models, with broad domains of applicability across NMs compositions and forms, that are directly usable by industry, especially SMEs, and regulators for NMs risk assessment and decision making. CompSafeNano will establish an extended safe-by-design paradigm that includes environmental sustainability (life cycle assessment) based on in silico predictions with experimental testing to validate the results. CompSafeNano has a clear set of objectives to deliver this vision of an in silico safe-by-design computational platform and will be in close communication with other EU projects to access existing data on NM hazard and integrate existing nanoinformatics and NMs risk governance platforms (i.e. within NanoCommons, NanoSolveIT & RiskGONE). Training activities will benefit both ESRs and ERs from participating organizations, with a strong focus on inter-sectoral exchange (SME-academia) and international collaboration, filling the well-recognised current skills gap in nanoinformatics and big data analytics.

The project CircEl-Paper deals with the development of paper-based high-performance Printed Circuit Boards (PCB) with a special focus on the development of new or enhanced recyclable or biobased materials. The project is designed to close the loop of circular economy. In order to accelerate the modification of materials suitable to realize the circular economy approach for PCBs, the CircEl-Paper Hop-On activity enforces the assessment of (modified) materials with regard to ecotoxicity in an early development stage. This mainly refers to the impact on environment, in case the materials unintendedly leave the recycling loop. Therefore, cost-effective computational methos for the environmental safety assessment are developed. This activity contributes to the SSbD framework (Safe and Sustainability by Design). Based on these assessments, CircEl-Paper partners that deal with material development receive guidance and recommendations. The assessments are based on enhanced computational models for structure-activity relationships designed and operated at QSAR. The work is focused on the material classes that are investigated in the CircEl-Paper project, such as modified paper, electronic inks, adhesives and chemical auxiliaries. The results are also linked to the intensive work of Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) as performed in the mother project since data interfaces between the LCA and other tools are developed. Therefore, an additional task is added to the CircEl-Paper project and supports and guides the consortium activity. It is carried out by QSAR, a polish company.