Welcome to the ISC3, IOMC & UNITAR Webinar Series
Implementing the Global Framework on Chemicals (GFC) through Safe and Sustainable Innovation: Global Perspectives and Practice
The GFC (2023) is a unique multi-stakeholder framework that aims to prevent or minimize harm from chemicals and waste to protect the environment and human health. It supports innovation to provide better products that are safe and sustainable by design and advance sustainable consumption and production patterns, including through resource efficiency and circular economy approaches.
Safe and sustainable innovation in chemicals and materials has evolved through multiple international initiatives over the past decades and is not limited to any single regional framework. While the European Commission’s Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) approach (2022, revised 2025) offers a structured, voluntary method to integrate safety and sustainability criteria into the innovation process, it builds on a broader body of work developed globally.
Since the late 1990s, the OECD has advanced sustainable chemistry concepts and practical tools, including the Safe(r) and Sustainable Innovation Approach for advanced materials, guidance on designing sustainable plastics from a chemicals perspective, and the SAAToolbox to support substitution and alternatives assessment.
The UN Green and Sustainable Chemistry Framework Manual (2021) further consolidated international understanding of how chemistry can contribute to sustainable development.
In parallel, the ISC3 articulated 10 Key Characteristics of Sustainable Chemistry, framing it as holistic, precautionary and systems-oriented; ethically grounded and transparent; supportive of sound chemicals management; aligned with circularity and green chemistry; and applied across the full life cycle of products and services
Taken together, these initiatives demonstrate that safe and sustainable innovation in chemicals and materials is a wide, globally evolving movement to embed life-cycle thinking, hazard reduction, circularity and responsible innovation into chemicals management and industrial transformation, consistent with the ambitions of the GFC.
Introducing SSbD and the GFC in the consumer electronics sector
16 April 2026
2:00 - 3:40 PM CET
The objective of this webinar is to enhance the understanding of the elements of the GFC and the SSbD framework and illustrate how these elements can be applied in the Consumer Electronics sector.