Helsinki Chemicals Forum 2015 and SusChem

Every year since 2009 in late spring, a meeting takes place in Helsinki that is of major relevance to chemicals manufacturers and their customers. And not just those whose businesses operate mainly in Europe.  The annual Helsinki Chemicals Forum (HCF) is hosted by the European Chemicals Agency, a body which was set up by the European Commission to manage the ongoing implementation of the EU's Regulation, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals legislation (REACH). SusChem board member Prof Rodney Townsend is a regular presenter at the meeting and here he reports on the 2015 meeting for SusChem News.

This year the Helsinki Chemicals Forum met at the end of May. All of the five main discussion topics had very much in mind the stated  aspiration of the planned 2020 World Summit on Sustainable Development, which is to achieve by 2020 a minimisation of 'the adverse effects of man-made chemicals on human health and the environment'.  An emphasis that ran through the whole meeting was the proposed Transatlantic Trade Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the EU and USA and what the implications of this might be in terms of harmonisation of regulations for chemicals between the two trading areas.

TTIP and REACH
Dr Klaus Berend from the European Commission’s DG Growth is currently advising the TTIP negotiators regarding REACH-related issues. He gave a summary of the current state of negotiations to the HCF participants and emphasised that under TTIP, neither the EU nor the USA will lower current safety standards.  Indeed, both parties will maintain their right to continue to raise them, but for the TTIP to work, harmonisation of current legislative policies is essential.  A further key issue is that neither party will impose their system on the other.  These negotiation principles have important implications for chemicals manufacturers as they seek to develop more sustainable products, whether their markets are primarily in the EU or USA or span both current trading areas.

SusChem is by its very nature highly committed to sustainable development.  Similarly, implementation of and changes in REACH regulations, or their equivalents in the USA, are critically important to any company committed to sustainable innovation.

SusChem was represented at the HCF meeting by myself (second left above) and Erwin Annys, Director of REACH Chemicals Policy at Cefic (centre above), also attended.  Erwin and I were both directly involved in the fifth Panel Discussion topic, entitled ‘Green Chemistry and Engineering – a Fundamental Breakthrough?’  The Panel discussed the basic tenets of the Twelve Principles of Green Chemistry which were first enunciated nearly a quarter of a century ago by Paul Anastas, who currently works for the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Is Green chemistry sustainable?
The Panel and audience (which added its thoughts via tweets and texts) concluded that it was time to review the Twelve Principles because their focus is almost wholly on the activities of chemists and not on the manufacturing process as a whole.

Specifically the following points were made during the discussion:

• 'Green chemistry' is not the same as 'green chemicals'.  This may seem an obvious point, but the Panel felt that it was not one which legislators always appreciated.  It was noted that current legislation in the USA emphasises just chemicals in final products rather than looking holistically at the sustainable manufacturing system.  See for example: http://www.epa.gov/oppt/existingchemicals/pubs/principles.html and https://www.dtsc.ca.gov/LawsRegsPolicies/Regs/SCPA.cfm. 
• Although the environmental imperative is the most critical factor in considering sustainable product design, no future process will be truly sustainable if it is not also societally beneficial and economically viable.  This is a key part of SusChem’s 2020 Strategy and also underpins the Europe 2020 growth strategy.  It is for this reason that SusChem prefers not to present ‘green chemistry’ as the answer per se.
• This holistic thinking must extend along whole value chains; what might seem ideal at one point in the chain may have major implications further along the value chain. This is also central to SusChem’s strategic approach.
• In the light of the recent EU Circular Economy initiative there is a strong need for a rethink issues related to waste disposal and re-use. In particular, Principle 1, which just states: 'It is better to prevent waste than to treat it or clean up waste chemicals', needs a major overhaul.

The general conclusion that was drawn at the HCF was that the time is overdue to update the Twelve Principles of Green Chemistry.  How this should be done and who should do it is not yet entirely clear, but that it should be done is crystal clear.

In line with movements in global scientific and technological developments, holistic thinking across all disciplinary barriers must proceed apace, especially in the light of the enormous changes and opportunities implicit in the coupling of intelligent computing with 'big data'. This matter will be the subject of a further blog article in the near future.

Formulation: Recognising a Key Enabling Technology for SusChem

At the 10th Anniversary SusChem Stakeholder Meeting (#SusChem10), held last month (June 2014) in Brussels, participants contributed to the development of the SusChem Strategic Innovation and Research Agenda (SIRA). The SIRA will form the basis of SusChem’s input to forthcoming calls for the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme and other European and national research and innovation programmes. The SIRA highlights the importance of sustainable chemistry and biotechnology in responding to the key Societal Challenges facing Europe and addressed by Horizon 2020 as part of the EU’s Europe 2020 growth strategy. 

In this special article SusChem board member Prof Rodney Townsend (above) outlines the opportunities for SusChem in the Health and Wellbeing area and how the stakeholder event highlighted a new area for potential SusChem research and innovation activities.

On 11 and 12 June at the Stakeholder Event breakout sessions were held to address each Societal Challenge (SC) addressed in the SIRA. Conference participants commented on and added to draft SIRA documents for each SC which had been prepared in advance of the meeting.

Although health and well-being topics were part of the initial discussions when SusChem was first established in 2004, to date SusChem has not considered in depth how innovative sustainable chemistry could deliver health benefits, generally leaving this to Horizon 2020 activities linked more strongly to the pharmaceutical industries, such as the Innovative Medicines Initiative, the Active and Assisted Living Programme and the Joint Programming Initiative on Antimicrobial Resistance.

SusChem well-being
However, it is recognised that there are a number of areas where SusChem could complement these activities, which are critically important if the objectives of Horizon 2020’s SC1 (‘Health, demographic change and wellbeing’) are to be delivered.

A number of topics have already been highlighted in personalised diagnosis using imaging; and responsive materials for prosthetic devices including:

• Innovative further development of highly sensitive imaging technologies for tumours, ischaemia and neurodegeneration using more specific and multifunctional chemical contrast agents and point-of-care diagnostics: an exciting prospect is to improve the specificity of expensive chemical markers, thus simultaneously increasing sustainability and reducing use of expensive reagents. 
• Further development of technologies that assist and enable those who either are partially and progressively disabled to continue to contribute positively to society for longer: Here, we envisage an enhanced role for new (‘smart’) materials, such as haptic (reactive to touch or other sensory input), photoactive or piezoelectric polymers, as well as improved prosthetic devices and biomedical implants containing improved biocompatible soft materials for artificial limbs and the like.

Formulation
In addition at the Stakeholder Meeting a key issue came to the fore during breakout discussions: formulation. This is an area that is often taken for granted, yet is of profound importance across the whole of sustainable chemical technology, pharmacology and biotechnology. Formulation comprises a set of key skills and technologies that are absolutely critical for bringing many new inventions and advances in technologies to market in nearly every industry sector.

For example, starting with health, it is fine to design at a molecular level a new contrast agent that can so specifically target characteristic moieties present in a tumour that it can lead to unambiguous identification of the location, size and nature of a tumour. But, can one also design a suitable vehicle for that contrast agent that will ensure that the contrast agent is dispersed quickly through to all the organs in the body, is kept stable as it is dispersed, and delivered in a targeted manner?

Designing a suitable vehicle to achieve this is what formulation is all about. And successful formulation technology is not just important for health applications. It forms the basis of many businesses beyond medical and/or pharmaceutical, including the processing, manufacture and delivery-in-use of foods, personal products, cosmetics, and paints. It also has a role in crude oil extraction, including enhanced recovery concepts such as ‘fracking’, vehicle fuel or lubrication systems and very many other areas.  

The theory that underpins formulation is primarily physico-chemical and was traditionally referred to as ‘colloid science’.  It is concerned with the quantification of the forces that operate at interfaces between discrete physical domains, and how these forces operate and change over a hierarchy of length and time scales in different types of colloidal systems for example suspensions, sols, pastes, gels, foams, emulsions, micro-emulsions, gels, polymer and fat crystal networks, complex fluids and liquid crystals.

These forces combine to yield the observed useful properties of these systems including targeted delivery, visco-elasticity, opalescence, thixotropy, adherence and ‘spreadability’, softness, and dispersibility etc. They also are key to the delivery of product characteristics under different physical and chemical conditions such as the clarity and response rate of a LCD phone display, when an ice cream will soften and melt, how long it takes for an emollient hand cream to spread and penetrate skin, the touch or taste or smell of a food or medicine, how easy a medicine is to swallow and how fast the active components ingest through the stomach and intestinal walls amongst many other examples.

A new SusChem KET?
Although the physics underpinning these phenomena is fairly well understood, this understanding does not in itself lead one to be able to a priori formulate a product with the desired properties. The ability to do this lies with physical and synthetic chemists together with chemical and process engineers and comprises a highly valuable set of skills, based on a sound knowledge of theory and years of experience. But this skill base, so important for future innovation, is declining across Europe as a whole.

The Stakeholder Meeting highlighted the need to nurture and build this skill set as a SusChem key enabling technology (KET) that is applicable across and along value chains that cover many different industry sectors.

In his closing remarks at the 12th Stakeholder Meeting, SusChem Chairman Dr Klaus Sommer emphasised the need for us to highlight “formulation for delivery” in the SusChem SIRA. This will probably now result in the inclusion of a proposal for a Horizon 2020 Coordination and Support Action (CSA) in the SIRA that would bring the chemical, biotechnological and pharmaceutical sectors together to exchange information and enhance each other’s innovative skills in formulation.

For more information on SusChem activities and the new SusChem SIRA contact Jacques Komornicki, SusChem Coordinator at Cefic.

SusChem finalises strategy for Horizon 2020

SusChem has just published its enhanced strategy document: ‘Meeting the Challenges of Europe 2020’. The new refined strategy for the European Technology Platform (ETP) is squarely aimed at enabling SusChem to be fully equipped to meet the challenges that are implicit in the Europe 2020 strategy for growth. It sets a consistent basis for SusChem’s engagement with the forthcoming European Commission Horizon 2020 framework programme for research and innovation.

The enhanced strategy is the result of a consultative process launched at SusChem’s 10th Stakeholder Conference in April and was led by former SusChem Chairman Prof Rodney Townsend (below).

SusChem Chairman Dr. Klaus Sommer comments: “This document will set SusChem strategy for the next few years and will guide our efforts to make a very significant contribution to achieving smart, sustainable growth in Europe. SusChem will be fully engaged in Horizon 2020, and other elements of the Europe 2020 agenda, to ensure that chemistry and biotechnology continue to drive the innovative, truly sustainable technology solutions that are needed to address the challenges facing society today.”

“I thank Rodney for his hard work and dedication in leading the consultation process and preparing the strategy,” continues Dr. Sommer. “The final document also fits very well in terms of both content and in timing with the recent position paper from the European Commission of the future of ETPs.”

The consultation process on the document was exhaustive. “Over the past six months the strategy has evolved as the result of a wide range of inputs from stakeholders,” says Prof. Townsend. “Like so many of SusChem’s activities this has been a highly collaborative effort and the result is a strategy which provides a clear path forward for the platform.”

Key elements
The key elements of the SusChem 2020 strategy can be summarized in two paragraphs:

The new SusChem strategy retains research, innovation and education actions at the heart of its activities. There is a new commitment to engage with policy makers and partner organisations to shape research and innovation policies and deliver truly sustainable innovation that creates value in and for European society.

To achieve its objectives the platform’s partnership activities will be expanded strategically, by increasing substantially multidisciplinary and cross-sector working along value chains. In addition, cooperation between SusChem Europe and its National Technology Platforms will be strengthened.

To download the new Strategy document, please visit the SusChem website. For more information on the new SusChem strategy, please contact the secretariat.

Sustainable Chemistry Future in an Uncertain Europe

SusChem board member and former Chairman Prof Rodney Townsend has written a feature article on SusChem, research, innovation and the future of Europe for the Finnish chemistry magazine Kemia.

Prof Townsend was invited to write the article following lectures at Helsinki University and at the Helsinki Chemicals Forum earlier in the year.

The article entitled ‘Building a Sustainable Chemistry Future in an Uncertain Europe’ was published in Kemia (the Finnish Chemical Magazine) and can be accessed here. The article covers the increasing importance of sustainable chemistry and the way new chemical technologies can make a tangible difference to all our futures. According to Kemia’s editor the article has attracted a lot of reader response and interest already.

Readers of the article are strongly encouraged to learn more about SusChem and to actively join in with SusChem’s activities. Prof Townsend hopes that the article will prompt interest in Finland forming its own National Technology Platform – a development that SusChem would welcome.

Kemi is a professional magazine dedicated to chemistry and first published in 1974. It is the membership magazine of the Association of Finnish Chemical Societies and the Biobio Society with a total readership of over 10 000.