ECOSChem Releases Sustainable Chemistry Report

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The Expert Committee on Sustainable Chemistry (ECOSChem) has released a report, Definition and Criteria for Sustainable Chemistry, which serves to provide a clear and actionable definition and set of criteria for sustainable chemistry. ECOSChem has aspirations that this definition and set of criteria will be adopted and adapted for uses such as policymaking, education, and investment decision-making and to guide chemical, material, process, and product design and implementation.

ECOSChem has defined sustainable chemistry as “the development and application of chemicals, chemical processes, and products that benefit current and future generations without harmful impacts to humans or ecosystems.” The report outlines numerous criteria which should be considered to achieve sustainable chemistry, although the report notes that sector-specific and chemistry-specific metrics and timeframes will need to be developed to make each of the criteria actionable. The criteria are as follows:

Equity and Justice

A sustainable chemical, material, process, product, or service will:

  • Be designed or implemented with authentic community engagement.
  • Be designed or implemented in a manner that does no harm when feasible and prioritizes the remediation of harm to communities that have been disproportionately impacted at any stage in the lifecycle of a chemical process or product.
  • Protect workers, marginalized groups, and vulnerable groups.
  • Be designed or implemented in a way that does not create new problems or shift harm.
  • Be designed or implemented in a way that supports local economies and ensures product access and affordability for marginalized groups.

Transparency

A sustainable chemical, material, process, product, or service will:

  • Make public health, safety, and environmental data an accessible format.
  • Include scientifically defensible and openly accessible verification for sustainability, health, safety, and other claims.
  • When possible, include a chain of custody so that chemicals and materials used in a product can be traceable throughout the lifecycle.

Health and Safety Impacts

A sustainable chemical, material, process, product, or service will:

  • Be without hazards, hazardous components, emissions, and toxic byproducts and breakdowns.
  • Not result in releases, including releases of persistent or bioaccumulative byproducts or breakdown products.

Climate and Ecosystem Impacts

A sustainable chemical, material, process, product, or service will:

  • Utilize renewable, non-toxic chemical building blocks.
  • Have no negative impacts on climate and biodiversity, including impacts on habitat and resource degradation.
  • Be without harmful releases to air, water, and land across its lifecycle, including for transportation and distribution.

Circularity

A sustainable chemical, material, process, product, or service will:

  • Be designed to have a lifetime appropriate to its use and enable safe reuse and non-toxic recycling.
  • Prioritize resource and energy efficiency, conservation, and reclamation, reduced consumption of finite resources, and waste prevention, minimization, and elimination.

There is no indication that this detailed and rigorous definition will be adopted or applied by any federal or state agencies.

Shell Company Greenwashing Complaint Filed with SEC

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On February 1, 2023, Global Witness, an environmental justice-focused non-profit organization and a Shell shareholder, filed a complaint with the SEC’s Climate and ESG Task Force requesting the Agency investigate claims Shell has made regarding its renewable energy sources. The complaint alleges that Shell has materially misstated its financial commitment to renewable resources of energy by inflating the content of its new report,  “Renewables and Energy Solutions” (“RES”), reporting segment regarding fossil fuel activities.

Global Witness believes statements in the RES exaggerate the extent to which Shell is reducing its reliance on fossil fuels and investing in renewable energy sources. The non-profit states that while Shell claims to spend 12% ($2.4 billion) of its annual expenditure ($19.7 billion) on “Renewables and Energy Solutions,” actually, the company spends only 1.5% ($288 million) of its annual expenditure on true renewables (e.g., solar and wind power generation).  The complaint asserts that much of the RES designation is actually being diverted to investments in natural gas, which is neither renewable nor an energy solution.

In its complaint, Global Witness requests an SEC investigation into the following:

  • Whether the activities included in the RES segment have been properly reported under relevant accounting standards.
  • Whether including natural gas in RES without reporting how much spending Shell directs to gas has caused Shell to omit material facts necessary to its investors’ clear understanding of Shell’s purported energy transition.
  • Whether Shell’s reported capex on RES includes so much natural gas spending that labeling the segment “Renewables and Energy Solutions” constitutes a materially misleading misstatement.
  • Whether Shell is adequately disclosing its renewable energy investments in accordance with Section 10(b) of the Exchange Act and Rule 10b-5 thereunder, which make it unlawful to issue materially misleading statements or omissions in connection with the purchase or sale of any security.

Global Witness further requests that if SEC finds that Shell is misstating or omitting material facts in its financial filings, the Commission issue appropriate enforcement action to ensure that Shell’s investors have access to the clear and comprehensive information they rely upon to inform their investment decisions.

California Department of Toxic Substances Hosted Engagement Sessions on Sustainable Chemistry Definition

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The California Department of Toxic Substances Control (CDTSC) hosted two engagement sessions encouraging stakeholders to share their perspectives on an actionable definition of sustainable chemistry that was provided by the Expert Committee on Sustainable Chemistry (ECOSChem). ECOSChem is a 20-person group including representatives from academia, government, industry, and non-governmental organizations.  The group has been tasked with establishing “an ambitious, actionable definition and criteria for sustainable chemistry that can enable effective government policy, inform business and investor decision making, enhance chemistry education, and spur the adoption across all supply chains of chemicals that are safer and more sustainable.”

In its draft, ECOSChem defined sustainable chemistry as “the practice and application of chemistry that eliminates negative impacts to humans and ecosystems, as well as benefits current and future generations.” The definition was drafted with five criteria in mind (1) health and safety through hazard elimination, (2) climate and ecosystem impacts, (3) circularity, (4) equity and justice, and (5) transparency. In addition to the definition, , ECOSChem provided the following indicators of what sustainable chemistry will look like:

A sustainable chemical, material, process, or product will…

  • Eliminate all associated hazards and hazardous emissions to all people and ecosystems across its existence.
  • Not result in releases, including releases of byproducts or breakdown products, that negatively persist or bioaccumulate.
  • Eliminate impacts on climate and biodiversity by utilizing earth-abundant, non-toxic chemical building blocks that minimize habitat and resource degradation, greenhouse gas emissions, carbon footprints, and energy consumption, including for transportation and distribution.
  • Be designed to have [a] lifetime appropriate for its use and enable safe reuse and non-toxic recycling.
  • Prioritize resource and energy conservation and reclamation, reduce consumption of finite resources, and waste prevention, minimization, and elimination.
  • Be designed such that all associated negative social impacts are eliminated.
  • Be made or implemented to prioritize the remediation of harms for communities and societies that have been disproportionately impacted by traditional chemistries, chemicals, and chemical processes, and/or support the needs of workers, marginalized groups (e.g., immigrant communities, and communities of color), and vulnerable groups (e.g., pregnant women and children).
  • Be made or implemented in a way that does not create new problems or shift harm to other communities or societies.
  • Have had its health, safety, and environmental data disclosed in an accessible format to individuals, workers, communities, policymakers, and the public.
  • Use independent, third-party systems to verify sustainability, health, safety, and other claims. The sources for verification should be openly accessible.

ECOSChem members will use the feedback received at the meeting to revise the definition to ensure that the language is clear and actionable.

 

 

 

 

New chemical footprint tool released.

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Clean Production Action, an environmental nonprofit, and the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production at the University of Massachusetts Lowell yesterday announced the launch of a new tool for companies and investment firms to measure suppliers’ use of safer chemicals and evaluate their own progress towards sustainability. The Chemical Footprint Project (CFP) is a third-party benchmark facilitating the comparison of corporate chemical use practices, conceptually similar to carbon footprint metrics.

The CFP defines “chemical footprint” as “the total mass of chemicals of high concern (CoHCs) in products sold by a company and used in its manufacturing operations.” The CFP identifies chemicals of high concern as all chemicals on California’s Safer Consumer Products list of Candidate Chemicals.

The CFP’s Steering Committee and Technical Committee members are drawn from several major corporate and nonprofit stakeholders, including Target, Staples, Kaiser Permanente, Hewlett-Packard, Seagate Technology, ChemSec, Environmental Defense Fund, and the U.S. Green Building Council.

According to the Project’s press release, the CFP is “the first initiative to publicly measure overall corporate chemicals management performance by evaluating:

  • Management Strategy
  • Chemical Inventory
  • Progress Measurement
  • Public Disclosure.”

The Project is expected to be fully operational in early 2015. The CFP is only the latest initiative to measure and manage the environmental and health impacts of products based on chemicals in supply chains. In October, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development released a guidance document on life cycle assessment (LCA) methods for chemical products. Last year, retailers Target and Walmart both announced sustainable chemical products programs which were both based on private standards.

Global chemical industry publishes guidance on environmental footprints for products.

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Ten global chemical companies and stakeholders have released guidance for the chemical sector on communicating a product’s environmental footprint using life cycle assessment (LCA) methods. Collaborating as a working group of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), the members developed the guidance document – titled Life Cycle Metrics for Chemical Products – with the objective of facilitating “improved sustainability across value chains” by communicating reliable information using a “common language.” The guidance is based on ISO 14040:2006 and 14044:2006 and sets out requirements covering topics including:

  • Footprint system boundaries: Product footprint studies should be cradle-to-grave, except for business-to-business products, which may use cradle-to-gate studies. Cradle-to-gate studies must include end-of-life impacts for all waste generated in production.
  • Defining the functional unit and reference flow: The functional unit must be consistent with the goal and scope of the study, and the duration of the functional unit must be specified for cradle-to-grave studies. Compared solutions shall be assessed on main functionality, technical quality (stability, durability, ease of maintenance), and additional functions rendered during use and disposal.
  • Impact categories, energy, and other flows: The guidance names certain models to use in characterizing impacts ranging from global warming to marine eutrophication to human toxicity and ecotoxicity. Energy flows, including cumulative energy demand, renewable energy consumption, and non-renewable energy consumption, must also be assessed and reported.
  • Data source requirements and quality management: Primary data (from specific operations in the studied product’s life cycle) should be “the most accurate available data,” including on-site measurements of aggregated consumed water, energy, and raw material, as well as continual air and water emissions.
  • Main methodological choices: The guidance provides a decision tree for choosing how to allocate environmental impacts for multiple products with different functions coming from the same system. Other methodological choices addressed include: attribution of recycling benefits; avoided emissions; bio-based carbon storage; carbon storage and delayed emissions; and land-use change.
  • Uncertainties of results: At a minimum, studies should include a qualitative description of uncertainties. Quantitative assessments of uncertainty based on Monte Carle simulations are optional.
  • Critical/peer review: Chemical product footprint studies must undergo peer review to assess consistency with the guidance. Externally published comparative claims must undergo “an external critical review by a panel of LCA experts.” All studies must include a statement specifying that the study was critically or peer reviewed and summarizing the review’s conclusions.

This guide is the third release from the WBCSD Chemical Sector’s “Reaching Full Potential” project, which previously released guidance for the chemical industry on accounting and reporting corporate greenhouse gas emissions and avoided emissions. Together, the Project’s publications seek to provide for “consistent and credible communication on how the value chains of chemicals impact on and contribute to sustainability.”

The working group is comprised of major companies like BASF, Eastman Chemical, Evonik, and Solvay, as well as Cefic, the European Chemical Industry Council. The next step for the Reaching Full Potential project is to develop a guide for companies to assess social impacts and benefits of chemical products. Development of that guide is already under way, with release expected in late 2015.

National Research Council advises EPA on sustainability-based decision-making.

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A new report advises the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to consider incorporating sustainability concepts used in the agency’s Design for Environment (DfE) program in its new chemicals screening process as it evolves, suggesting a new direction for Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) reform. The National Research Council (NRC) says that EPA should incorporate into its decision-making process an integrated strategy for evaluating effects on the three dimensions of sustainability – environmental, social, and economic – across all the agency’s activities.

This week, the NRC, the principal operating agency of the National Academies, released its report, Sustainability Concepts in Decision-Making: Tools and Approaches for the US Environmental Protection Agency. The NRC found that a wide variety of tools are available for the agency to use in integrating sustainability concepts into its decision-making, while declining to give “prescriptive advice” on “the use of specific tools and specific decisions” and recognizing that incorporating sustainability into EPA decision-making will be an “evolutionary process.”

The NRC’s report elaborates on issues left unresolved in the NRC’s 2011 report, Sustainability and the U.S. EPA (also known as the Green Book); this new report was commissioned by EPA “to examine applications of scientific tools and approaches for incorporating sustainability considerations into assessments that are used to support EPA decision-making.”

The report includes among five case studies examining how EPA could incorporate sustainability tools into its decision-making the agency’s DfE program. The NRC recommends that EPA use a “systems-thinking approach,” in contrast to the agency’s traditional focus on reducing releases from specific source categories. Likewise, in regulating products, EPA is urged to consider potential life-cycle effects of business processes along the entire value chain. In particular, the report advises EPA to consider applying lessons learned from the DfE program to the new chemicals screening process under TSCA. The NRC highlights the following approaches from the DfE program:

  • Convening public-private partnerships;
  • Using a variety of screening-level and quantitative analytic tools (like life-cycle analysis and alternatives assessments) relevant to sustainability; and
  • Using a variety of indicators (ecotoxicity, human toxicity, bioaccumulation, and environmental persistence) relevant to sustainability.

EPA is also advised to look to the private sector’s sustainability expertise to learn about tools used outside the agency, and to convene the private sector and NGOs “to define and implement value-chain-wide goals and performance outcomes.” In addition, the NRC recommends that EPA work to share insights and best practices learned from leading companies with other businesses.

Partnering with EPA's Design for Environment at Walmart Sustainable Products Expo.

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EPA is a significant partner to companies leading innovation efforts in the arena of safer consumer products, according to Assistant Administrator Jim Jones, of EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. In a blog post yesterday, Jones describes how EPA’s Design for Environment (DfE) program recently participated in a “Supplier Panel on Sustainable Chemistry” at Walmart’s first ever Sustainable Products Expo, which brought together leaders from EPA, NGOs, and product manufacturers.

As we have previously discussed, EPA’s DfE program – which establishes voluntary sustainability-related standards for consumer products like household cleaners – plays a major role in Walmart’s Sustainable Chemistry Initiative. Jones writes that EPA’s contribution is “providing scientific expertise and understanding of health and environmental impacts throughout the supply chain, educating consumers and companies alike, and bringing people to the table to stimulate dialogue and partnerships.” Jones notes that with “growing consumer recognition” and trust for the DfE’s “Safer Products” label and program criteria, EPA’s partnerships with companies like Walmart and its participating suppliers can promote sustainability, health, and the environment while meeting consumer demand and growing their business.

The Expo also featured announcements from Walmart and its suppliers of various new sustainability commitments and initiatives. One such initiative is the Closed Loop Fund, which will invest $100 million seeded from suppliers including Coca-Cola, Pepsico, and Johnson & Johnson in recycling infrastructure with the goal of “transforming the recycling system in the United States.” Cargill made commitments to increase supply chain transparency in beef and Procter & Gamble pledged to reduce water use for liquid laundry detergent. Together, the suppliers participating across all of these voluntary sustainability efforts account for over $100 billion in sales at Walmart.

Virginia Assembly Opposes Agenda 21

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Sustainability:

Yes, from the state that brought us Thomas Jefferson and so many other leaders, we now get the following.  Leaders or not?  You decide.

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HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION NO. 654

Offered January 9, 2013

Prefiled January 8, 2013

Recognizing the need to oppose United Nations Agenda 21.

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Patrons– Lingamfelter, Cole, Hodges, Landes and Peace

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Referred to Committee on Rules

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WHEREAS, United Nations Agenda 21, a comprehensive nonbinding, voluntarily implemented action plan concerning sustainable development, environmentalism, social engineering, and globalism, was first presented at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992; and

WHEREAS, United Nations Agenda 21 is being covertly introduced in states and local communities across the nation by the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives through local sustainable development policies such as Smart Growth, Wildlands Project, Resilient Cities, Regional Visioning Projects, and other “green” or “alternative” projects; and

WHEREAS, United Nations Agenda 21, a radical plan of purported “sustainable development,” envisions the American way of life of private property ownership, single-family homes, and individual freedoms as destructive to the environment; and

WHEREAS, in addition, social justice is described by United Nations Agenda 21 as the right and opportunity of all people to benefit equally from the resources afforded by society and the environment that would be accomplished by the redistribution of wealth; and

WHEREAS, United Nations Agenda 21, referring to the 21st century, is an action agenda of the United Nations, other multilateral organizations, and individual governments around the world that can be executed at local, national, and global levels; United Nations Agenda 21 has been affirmed and modified at subsequent United Nations conferences and various countries have become signatories, including the United States; and

WHEREAS, because United Nations Agenda 21 is not a treaty, the United States Senate has been unable to hold a formal debate or vote to ratify it, and the executive branch has not acted on it in any way; nevertheless, there is support in Congress for United Nations Agenda 21 and over 528 United States cities have become members of the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, an international sustainability organization that helps to implement the Agenda 21 and Local Agenda 21 concepts across the world; and

WHEREAS, according to the United Nations Agenda 21 policy, national sovereignty is deemed a social injustice and opposition to the policy has increased over the last 10 years in the United States at the local, state, and federal levels, and several state and local governments have passed legislation rejecting United Nations Agenda 21 as “erosive of American sovereignty”; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED by the House of Delegates, the Senate concurring, That the General Assembly recognize the need to oppose United Nations Agenda 21 due to its radical plan of purported “sustainable development,” and that the General Assembly recognize the policy’s infringement on the American way of life and individual freedoms and ability to erode American sovereignty.

RESOLVED FURTHER, That the Clerk of the House of Delegates transmit a copy of this resolution to the United States Secretary of State, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, and the members of the Virginia Congressional Delegation in order that they may be apprised of the sense of the General Assembly of Virginia in this matter during their deliberations.