On 7th March 2024, SABYDOMA was pleased to hold a hybrid, satellite event of ANTHOS’24 in Vienna (Austria); with a follow-up Safe-and-Sustainable-by-Design (SSbD) workshop being organised following the one successfully held in February 2022. The workshop, entitled “A stakeholder’s perspective of Safe-and-­Sustainable-by-Design – a bigger picture!”, explored what progress had been made since our initial workshop, and highlighted the past four years of research and dissemination on the SSbD approach; with contributions of stakeholders from academia (University of Birmingham), European Commission, policy makers (Cefic, ChemSec), industry (Applied Nanoparticles SL, Nanotechnologies Industry Association, TEMASOL) and relevant ongoing projects (Partnership for the Assessment of Risks from Chemicals (PARC)), who discussed the current status and understanding of the SSbD approach. 

The workshop started with a presentation on SABYDOMA’s legal paper covering the content and findings of the two legal workshops organised in January 2021 and June 2023. It was followed by a roundtable discussion with panellists answering questions concerning the implementation, challenges and potential developments of the SSbD approach since the European Commission’s Recommendation was published on 8 December 2022; and, in light of the ongoing scientific research. 

Ninety-one participants (75 on-site and 16 online) from all over the world with slightly more male participants, from a wide range of stakeholders (58% scientific community, 23% industry, 2% innovators, 2% international organisations, 5% national authorities, 5% EU institutions, 3%, civil society, 2% general public joined the workshop (See Figure 1 below).

Figure 1. Representation of the different stakeholder groups among the participants.

After a warm welcome to the workshop by the project Communication & Dissemination manager Beatriz Alfaro Serrano (BNN), SABYDOMA’s coordinator, Prof. Andrew Nelson, from the University of Leeds, gave a short introduction to the workshop, commenting on SABYDOMA’s contribution to SSbD and the main project’s achievements. Anthony Bochon (Gil Robles – San Bartolome & Partners) and Ignasi Gispert Pi (Applied Nanoparticles SL) then summarised SABYDOMA’s legal paper, the findings of the two legal workshops organised by the project (first workshop in January 2021 and second workshop in June 2023) and SABYDOMAS’s proposal for a Regulatory Innovation Hub for medical devices incorporating or consisting of nanomaterials.

Distinguished panellists of the workshop included:

• Eva Valsami Jones (University of Birmingham, UK)
• Victor Puntes (Applied NanoParticles, Vall d’Hebron Institut de Recerca, Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Spain)
• Sean Kelly (Nanotechnology Industries Association (NIA), Belgium)
• Henrik Edin (ChemSec, Sweden)
• Anne Chloe Devic (European Chemical Industry Council (CEFIC), Belgium)
• Denis Sarigiannis (representative of PARC project)
• Hubert Rauscher (European Commission JRC)
• Blanca Suárez Merino (TEMAS Solutions GmbH, Switzerland)

The workshop finished with a very interactive Roundtable discussion, moderated by Anthony Bochon, where the eight panellists enthusiastically discussed various aspects of SSbD: the progress in SSbD since the EC recommendation of SSbD (8 December 2022), challenges of SSbD in the future,  in addition to whether the EC recommendation was the proper tool for advancing SSbD, etc.

The agenda of the workshop is available here.

The workshop’s presentation is available in the SABYDOMA Community in Zenodo under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0), under DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.10894013, and the recording of the workshop is available in SABYDOMA’s YouTube Channel here.