On 15th December 2025, the SSbD4CheM consortium came together virtually for the M24 General Assembly. The meeting provided an opportunity to review the progress achieved over the past six months and to align on priorities and next steps for the months ahead.

Partners presented updates across the project’s Work Packages, highlighting key scientific and technical advances. Presentations were delivered by WP leaders (Milica Velimirovic, Beatriz Alfaro Serrano, Ivana Burzic, Barry Hardy, Tassos Papadiamantis/Panagiotis Kolokathis, Stephan Wagner, Yvonne Kohl, Wouter Gebbink, and Fruela Pérez Sánchez). A dedicated session also focused on the progress of the internal case studies in the automotive, textiles, and cosmetics sectors.

We were pleased to have some members of the External Advisory Board (EAB) joining us — Melanie MacGregor, Linda J. Johnston, Matteo Zanotti Russo, and Dr. Ze’evi Ma’or — and we sincerely thank them for their continued support and valuable guidance on project developments.

As always, it was a pleasure to connect with all partners and to continue working together towards the goals of SSbD4CheM.

On 20-21 May 2025 SSbD4CheM consortium met in Valencia (Spain) for our M17 General Assembly in the facilities of ITENE, our experts in SSbD, leading the work package dealing with the sustainability assessment across the life cycle assessment (LCA).

We kicked off the meeting with a warm welcome from Carmen Sánchez (technical director of ITENE) and our coordinator, Milica Velimirovic from VITO, setting the stage for the WP presentations showcasing the progress in the project.

A special spotlight of the day was on our internal case studies in automotive, textiles, and cosmetics, where our colleagues from WOOD K plus (Claudia Pretschuh), CTCR (Eduardo Santamaría) and NIC (Ondrej Panak) updated us with the developments and findings — it was inspiring to see how SSbD is being applied across diverse sectors!

The second day of the meeting started with a pitch presentation session of some of our Early Career Researchers on their last research:

• Xiaoyu Zhang from VITO and Mansoor Ahmad Bhat from Loughborough University on their research on particle analysis in the textiles case study (washing processes). The titles of their presentations were “Tailored Analytical Approaches to Assess Microplastics and Nanoparticles Release from Textiles During Washing” and “Washing Test for Textiles”, respectively.
• Thomas Arblaster from University of Leiden on his research on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) (advancing the method to expand the toolbox, as well as its application, i.e., robust application of the toolbox).

After that, ITENE colleagues guided us through their impressive labs, showing us their equipment and all the different processes they are able to do!

The meeting ended with an internal training on ChemInformatics tools by our colleagues from  NovaMechanics and Entelos (Panagiotis Kolokathis and Tassos Papadiamantis).

Huge thanks to ITENE and their whole team behind for being a great host, ensuring a smooth meeting, bringing all us to Valencia and giving us a real culinary journey featuring many local specialities, where paella, of course, was not missing!!

Some highlights of the 2 sunny days in Valencia: