European Chemical Industry Council – Long Range Research Initiative

* LRI SSbD1 – Multi-Criteria Decision Tool for Early-Stage Screening and Trade-Off Assessment in SSbD Innovation

The transition to a sustainable, circular economy requires integrating Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) principles across the entire product innovation lifecycle. Real-world product development often involves navigating complex trade-offs such as balancing hazard reduction with material performance, or environmental impacts with economic feasibility. Early screening can prevent costly redesigns and regulatory bottlenecks, but truly sustainable innovation requires addressing multiple trade-offs among hazard, exposure, cost, and broader sustainability impacts. Current tools often focus on individual parameters in isolation, limiting their practical utility in early innovation stages where multiple decisions must be made under uncertainty.

To ensure all aspects and parameters are considered the development of a decision-support open-source and open-access tool that enables early-phase, transparent trade-off analysis across multiple SSbD dimensions would support  industry, avoid undesired redesigns, reduce regulatory risks, and speed up time-to-market for safer, more sustainable products.

This RfP seeks development for a “Trade-off analysing tool” that could offer immediate impact while aligning with long-term SSbD objectives as well as policy and regulatory shifts towards more responsible design practices.

Funding: €200,000

https://cefic-lri.org/request-for-proposals/lri-ssbd1-multi-criteria-decision-tool-for-early-stage-screening-and-trade-off-assessment-in-ssbd-innovation/

* LRI ECO71 – Integrated assessment of water-soluble polymer bioavailability

This project will generate foundational data and learnings on what methods are suitable for assessing systemic bioavailability of water-soluble polymers. The long-term aim is to enable decisions on bioavailability testing for polymers, support human and environmental data hazard and risk assessments (and therefore, hazard data requirements), inform bioaccumulation potential, and aid in grouping assessments of polymers.

funding:  €700,000

https://cefic-lri.org/request-for-proposals/lri-eco71-integrated-assessment-of-water-soluble-polymer-bioavailability/