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.
Specific Objectives of the Webinar Series
This Webinar Series is expected to:
- Inform policy makers, industry representatives, and other stakeholders about ongoing partnerships, sustainability initiatives, and trends worldwide;
- Emphasize the links between various chemical sustainability frameworks and tools and the GFC to be used as examples of an innovation process for chemicals and materials in different sectors and regions;
- Contribute to the implementation and advancement of the GFC by presenting sustainability, SSbD and GFC principles as concrete design, investment, and policy decisions across selected sectors;
- Present case-studies and share the lessons learned;
- Exemplify how chemical innovation can be economically viable and sustainability can create clear value for both innovators and society;
- Publicly share existing easy-to-use tools (e.g., guidance documents) to help implementation of the GFC, such as the materials developed under the SSbD framework, the UN Green and Sustainable Chemistry Framework Manual,the OECD’s Safe(r) and Sustainable Innovation Approach (SSIA), and others.
- Present clear linkages with GFC implementation, with particular focus on relevant GFC sector Implementation Programmes (IPs), including for the Electronics Sector), to ensure alignment with sector-specific priorities, promote uptake of the D6 building blocks, and strengthen measurable impact pathways.
Target Audience
Stakeholders include but are not limited to sustainability leaders (including those with limited prior awareness of the GFC, chemical safety and sustainability and/or SSbD approaches), policy stakeholders responsible for chemicals, product, and innovation policy; companies and start-ups engaged in product and material design; Green and Sustainable Chemistry and SSbD actors; practitioners supporting implementation in emerging and transitioning economies; and researchers and designers influencing early-stage innovation decisions.
Introducing SSbD and the GFC in the consumer electronics sector
16 April 2026
2:00 - 3:30 PM CEST
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.