The Swiss Discussion Forum on Life Cycle Assessment (DF-LCA) is a platform for the exchange between LCA practitioners from industry, consultancy companies, administration, NGOs and scientist. The three LCA fora per year each cover a topic of interest for LCA application, methodology, research and/or communication. Internationally reknown speakers are usually invited to present their work related to the forumâs topic, dedicated to people interested in the field of LCA, working in Switzerland and abroad.
On 25 April 2024 the 86th Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Discussion Forum took place in Zurich with Safe- and Sustainable-by-Design (SSbD) as main topic. SSbD is a new framework developed by the Joint Research Center (JRC) of the European Commission that aims to transform the way how industry is developing new chemicals and materials. The aim of SSbD is to support the design and development of safe and sustainable chemicals and materials. For this, the communities of risk assessors (hazard and exposure assessment) and LCA have to intensely collaborate in order to make SSbD a reality. A first testing phase of the framework has resulted in a lot of activity in research and industry. Along the day, we will combine practical and conceptual presentations, and give time for discussion with the presenters.
The full-day event was hosted at the Campus ETH Zurich by the Swiss Discussion Forum on Life Cycle Assessment. This edition was focused on the Safe- and Sustainable-by-Design (SSbD) framework and included many contributions from outside of the LCA community. Stakeholders from government, industry, and diverse research organizations shared their experiences; besides presentations on technical aspects of SSbD and its implementation, the day also featured critical discussions on how to collaborate and move forward.
Thomas Arblaster, Leiden University (ULEI), attended the conference to raise awareness on SSbD4CheM, network and learn about efforts, results, and recommendations emerging from other work engaged with SSbD. Under the title âOptionality and systems thinking in SSbD with prospective LCAâ, he gave an oral presentation on the contribution that LCA can make in the development of novel chemicals and materials. The value of this contribution was characterized as understanding possible connections and implications beyond the end product (i.e., systems thinking) and creating the insights needed to adapt to a wide range of possible futures (i.e., optionality). His presentation is publicly available under DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.11121481.
The program of the DF-86 is available here. The recordings of all sessions are available here.
