SusChem France Roadmap

SusChem France has just published its national roadmap in English. The aim of the “SusChem France Roadmap” is to provide an overview of France’s situation with respect to sustainable chemistry needs and to outline the main lines of action followed by SusChem players to meet these needs as effectively as possible.

The document is addressed mainly to research teams in the public or private sector and to innovation managers and resource agencies that can help to build the chemical industry and produce the sustainable products of tomorrow.

Collective thinking
In the introduction to the report SusChem Europe Chairman Dr. Paul-Joel Derian says: "The SusChem France roadmap, a product of high-quality collective thinking, comes at the right time to contribute to the updating of SusChem Europe’s strategic agenda and [to] plan for its implementation over the next few years."

"[We must] actively propose solutions to the European Commission to guide the structuring of the 8th framework programme which will begin in 2013 and ensure that the innovation needs of the chemical industry are taken into account," he continues. "[We must] switch from a research culture to an innovation culture, using the whole value chain of our industry by heading at least one of the new Public-Private Partnership (PPP) programmes to be launched by Europe between now and the end of 2011."

"SusChem has announced its ambition to head a PPP on the theme of chemistry, industry and technology as a source of more resource-efficient industrial processes.
To achieve these ambitious objectives, we will have to bring together our customers and suppliers, continue to develop cooperation between public and private research, and pool our forces with other European platforms."

"This requires stronger involvement of SusChem’s national platforms and a strong effort from French manufacturers and academics to bring new human resources into SusChem."

Eight themes
The 40-page report describes eight themes that summarise the French position on sustainable chemistry. The themes are:

• Renewable raw materials and biosourced economy
  
• Chemistry and recycling
  
• Advanced materials
  
• Chemistry for energy
  
• Eco-efficient processes
  
• Analysis, methods and performance
  
• Eco-design
  
• Innovation network

The Roadmap was launched in France at the 2ème Rencontres de SusChem France (Second stakeholder meeting for the French national platform) that took place at the end of November 2010.

The original French version of the roadmap (Feuille de route de SusChem France (Ed. 2010)) is available to download here. For more information on SusChem France activities visit the website or contact SusChem France coordinator Valerie Lucas at UIC.