Safe and Sustainable-by-Design under the European Green Deal—regulatory readiness or pressure for companies?

The European Green Deal, popular for its “2050 climate neutrality” target, also postulates the “zero pollution ambition for a toxic-free environment,” supported through the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability (CSS). The CSS mentions Safe and Sustainable-by-Design (SSbD), calling for the integration of safety and sustainability into innovation. Developing the SSbD framework further is a key action enabling both CSS objectives and the broader Green Deal ambitions. Yet, SSbD’s complexity and data demands are seen by many companies as burdensome, and the benefits of SSbD adoption remain unclear. Therefore, this study examines SSbD’s role in “regulatory readiness,” i.e., proactive development of novel chemicals, materials, and products for compliance before market entry and for adaptability to future regulations. By analyzing 15 EU policies (prioritized through industry feedback) against 15 SSbD components, this study finds a 64% overlap, i.e., many mandates for SSbD components are observed within the analyzed legislation. The findings of this study inform recommendations for industry and policymakers to foster industrial competitiveness in the European Union. Companies are recommended to leverage SSbD for early regulatory readiness, internalize SSbD’s “fail early and fail cheap” philosophy, and invest in SSbD capacity building. Policymakers are recommended to incentivize corporate SSbD adoption, explicitly integrate SSbD into future legislation, and invest in research to address critical gaps in safety and sustainability sciences to strengthen SSbD further.