7. Prof Baba Shiv, Stanford, Informal Study Focus on Win-Win Product Changes and Direct Impact Consumers will not pay a premium simply for green – but they will pay extra for other co-benefits “Marketing green products, then, may not be all that different from marketing any other product: ‘It comes down to: How does this affect me and my family?’”
8. Emerging Trends in Measurement + Expectations Information is widely accessible
12. The Relevance of Chemical Risks Potential to harm employees, customer and environment Brand protection Avoidance of recalls Disruption of the supply chain
13. What Is “Chemical Footprinting?” Product Focus Carbon footprinting refers typically to an entity’s operational energy use Water footprinting typically refers to operational water use; Here we are referring to the embedded chemical risks associated with a product
14. Manufacturing Where are chemicals a concern? Reasonably controlled environment Acceptable exposure levels have often been established for workers and environment
15. Service Life Industrial, commercial or consumer users? … Purposeful release? Unintentional release? Mis-Use?
16. End of Life Consumer disposal often not controllable Re-purposing often considered a green action – but is it safe? Recycling can ‘return’ different chemicals than went out Raw material recovery
19. Case Study: Service Life of a Tire Tires wear out and the rubber is released to the environment. Is this a health risk?
20. Process to Understand Compile state of knowledge from literature and determine data gaps/needs Develop methods Measure tire wear particles in the environment Collect particles for testing Evaluate toxicity (Kreider et al., 2010 and www.wbcsd.org)
21. Looking Ahead … Get ahead of the curve Lots of opportunities for leadership Incorporation of chemical footprint concept into LCA Refine the definition or establish a quantitative unit to compare choices made with respect to chemicals
Thanks, Leonard.Good to be here today to discuss a favorite topic of mine … chemical footprinting and how it will help drive product sustainability..
Leonard has mentioned the need for new methodologies… and chemical footprinting is designed to bridge the gap. It’s a new methodology that goes beyond the traditional (e.g. LCA) to heighten cradle-to-cradle product understanding. Results are data-driven, actionable, and can be reported for transparency. From a brand management standpoint, this is vital. Because chemical footprinting will help your brand maximize sustainability, consumer / public confidence and reputation … all key elements to improving brand value. Which in turn, drives growth and helps save money.Excited to share with you some key messages about What are sustainable products?Sustainable products + green business trendsDefining chemical footprintingNew ChemRisk methodology and case study
Today, I’d like to provide a 30,000-foot level overview of chemical footprinting.I’ll start with some context about sustainable products + green business trends.Next, I’ll define chemical footprinting.Then, I’ll discuss the methodology behind this concept, and provide a case study.
Three ideas surround a sustainable product; namely they reduce consumption of natural resources throughout their life cycle; fair labor principles are followed in making the product, and they minimize health impacts on humans and our planet’s ecosystem.This afternoon, we are focused on this third bullet.
First and foremost, information is widely accessible to anyone who takes the time to look.Love it or hate it, we are very connected in the 21st century. The electronic information platforms have significantly transformed how we communicate with one another and quite frankly, it is not widely populated by true scientific experts.Nonetheless, those with opinions or information can quickly disseminate it through blogs, tweets and other online websites. Too often we have failed to appreciate the swiftness and severity of the public’s response to this type of communication.
In addition to easy information, product testing by consumers and advocacy groups has become increasingly easy to do – note I said easy, not necessarily accurate. We see this sort of thing all the timeAlso, the large amounts of biomonitoring data being collected by health agencies throughout the country is making chemical exposure a very personal experience and demanding an answer as to where the chemicals came from. And, as the analytical sensitivities of our methods get better and better – others will be detected for the first time and ones we know about will be measured at increasingly lower levels. And interpreting these measurements is an important aspect of risk assessment today.
Further, we have a greater understanding of where people interact with chemicals…study after study shows that personal chemical exposure is not associated with large factory emissions, rather it is the many small sources that we encounter mostly in our homes. This leads us to evaluating non-traditional exposure media like house dust, cookware, textiles and inside vehicles. And lastly, people expect to Not be exposed to chemicals. Unlike driving a car or downhill skiing, people generally do not accept risks from chemicals and expect that the products that they purchase and use will not be harmful to them or the environment. The demand for chemical free products has never been greater, but even offering a product line that’s fragrance free and dye free doesn’t eliminate the chemicals.
So how can you ensure that your product and your brand is not harmful to people or the environment?…I believe this can be done by chemical footprinting.Sadly, too often the phone on my desk rings because a product has gotten into “trouble”…trouble in the sense that AFTER it has been designed, manufactured, marketed and sold, it is perceived as posing a health or environmental risk. My message to all of you today is that most of these (quote/unquote) troubles can be prevented and most risks can be anticipated upfront.As we are all aware, a not so quiet revolution has occurred with respect to your stakeholder’s expectations of a product that not only performs as advertised, but also does not harm the environment or people. As the Green Chemistry movement takes hold, it is more important than ever to understand the chemical footprint of your product in order to truly understand if your new chemicals actually reduce the chemical risk and not just shift it.
Currently when evaluating the sustainability of a product, people look at three factors:the product’s carbon foot print, water foot print and sometimes its societal impact. However, none of these factors are typically associated with harm to a brand’s image, recall notices or disruption of the supply chain. Those damaging events are usually associated with the chemicals in the product – either as a result of an unwanted contaminant or a traditional ingredient that has come under fire from an environmental or health perspective. As the thousands of existing chemicals on the market come under the scrutiny of governments: first in the EU, and then elsewhere as other governments fall in line, many of those same chemicals will be given their walking papers…and substitutes will have to be found. This movement toward substitution requires a robust method for understanding the improvement in a product’s sustainability profile from the use of substitutes. We call this chemical footprinting.
So what do we mean by the term Chemical Footprinting – First, the focus of the chemical footprint is on the product itselfOther footprints that you may be more familiar with such as carbon footprints to assess impact to greenhouse gasses and water footprint to assess the amount of fresh water used in making the product are both typically associated with an entity’s operation only. The chemical footprint goes further. Here we are referring to the chemical risks associated with the life cycle of a product – how the chemicals in a product interact with the humans who make or use them and the ecology that may be impacted through those activities.
The chemical footprint starts with the products manufacture and here, we ask the questions:Do we understand the impact to our workers? Do we understand the impact to the Outdoor environment and our neighbors?The manufacturing portion of the chemical footprint is typically the easiest to understand. First, there is usually a reasonably controlled environment that allows for monitoring of chemicals. And second, acceptable exposure levels have often been established for workers and environment – making the risk analysis straightforward.
Then, the chemcial footprint moves on to evaluation of the product’s service life…the analysis is usually much more difficult.First, you need to understand who is using your product. Are they industrial or commercial workers or are they an average consumer? Not only do these people have different use patterns, you might also have slightly different formulations of your product for the different users.Then you must also ask, is the chemical release purposeful for the product to work? Or is the release unintentional? Further is it widespread into the environment? And also important is the consideration for the potential for misuse of your product.
Then lastly, the chemical footprint evaluates the End of Life…For some…the end of the life cycle is more important than the manufacturing or service life portions.Understanding the chemical risks associated with the end of life of your product can also be rather complicated because:Control over how your customer disposes of the product is often very difficultAlthough re-purposing a product is generally considered a (Quote/unquote) green action – it is possible that some re-uses may expose a person or the environment to chemicals that might not otherwise had happened. Recycling can sometimes return different chemicals in the product than those that were there initially. A classic example of this is the recycling of used solvents and motor oils. These products may need some sort of treatment before they can be resold. And, lastlyRaw material recovery is often then end game for many recyclers and can result in an exposure scenario quite different than those evaluated as part of the original manufacturing chemical footprint.
We’ve talked about what the chemical footprint is, and, now I would like to tell you how its done, so that you understand that this technique gives you a powerful tool for making responsible decisions about the chemicals you use in your products, avoid greenwashing claims and to be transparent about your process. I also have a couple of examples to share with you
As I have said, the potential chemical risk posed by a product – in essence, its chemical footprint is a knowable thing. You don’t need to consult the magic 8 ball to answer your questions, in fact, there are reliable scientific risk assessment methods which are routinely used to assess chemicals that can be used to evaluate your product. In general we use a basic 3-tier approach to understand toxicity and exposure to understand risk; moving from a simple step such as reviewing existing information to more in-depth analyses using various mathematical models.Lets just take a quick run through of the three tiers…Reviewing existing information: This can be as simple as looking at all those lists – you know the ones – the customer restricted substances lists and the numerous ones put out by various government agencies. But what if your chemical is not on a list? Does that mean you have the green light to use it? No, not necessarily, - those lists are not created equal and a chemicals appearance on one list may have no relevance to another. You may need to contact your supplier for additional information, especially regarding toxicity.If information is not readily available, the second tier that we move to is the use of screening level models. Many models are available which can give you a ball park idea of what kind of risk your product may pose by including a certain chemicals. However, the screening models are rather crude and may not be able to accommodate the use of your specific product.In that case, we move onto tier 3 which may involve data collection either from product users or through simulation studies, or in fact use one of the higher tier predictive models which require more effort in terms of information collection.So I’d like to finish up by giving you some examples of chemical footprinting in action…
The first case study is that of a tire.In 2006 a group of 11 tire companies (which included all the top brands - Goodyear, Michelin, Bridgestone, Pirelli, Continental, Cooper, Kuhmo, Hankook, Sumitomo, Toyo and Yokohama) came together as part of a proactive group to answer questions that could be asked of their industry in the future.One of the questions that they anticipated was whether or not the tire tread that wears away during the service life of a tire presents a human or ecological health risk.They formed a consortium under the auspices of the World Business Council on Sustainable Development and launched a CEO initiative to investigate some of the more broad questions regarding the environmental health risk associated with their products from manufacturing to use.
So this is an example of a product that ends up widely dispersed in the environment simply by the requirement of its function – the rubber needs to grip the road in order to be safe, but that interaction wears away not only tread rubber from the tire, but also the pavement. In fact, there are not many examples of a product being widely dispersed in the environment that are not related to vehicles or some form of transportation.The process for answering this question is on-going, and has been quite a journey. A lot of original research was required because as you might imagine, tread rubber is not a single chemical and in fact is not really considered a chemical mixture – the tire wear particle is an entity unto itself comprised of tread rubber and bits of pavement and other things imbedded from the road.In order to understand risk, we have to understand the exposure potential and the toxicity of the particles. The conceptual model for the particles is that they are released from the tire and primarily deposited on the road or nearby roadside, and a small amount can become airborne or be resuspended along with the rest of the road dust. Additionally, for those particles that are too large to be suspended…they can make their way to surface water from road run off, so aquatic habitats are an important consideration. I don’t have time today to discuss the entire body of work, but we employed the three-tier approach that I have described. First we used the existing information to assemble the state of knowledge on the topic from the literature and determined the data gaps and needs. Based on these we found out that we needed to develop methods to measure tire wear particles in the environment and also figure out a way to collect them in order to do testing. Lastly, there was precious little information on the toxicity of the particles, so various studies had to be designed. This one of the only project of its kind and if you are interested to learn more, you can check out our first publication as well as the Business Council website under the link to the Tire Industry, where all of the research is posted until it can get published.
So…some thoughts for the future…Get ahead of the curve by assessing your existing products (and new products from the early design phase), to demonstrate corporate responsibility, and to collaborate on advancing methodologies. There are lots of opportunities for leadership. Companies – can make a commitment to reduce the chemical footprint of their products by making informed choices with respect to chemical substitution, and achievement of overall reduction in human and environmental health risk from their productsAdditionally, I think we may find it useful to work with the LCA specialists to incorporate the concept of the chemical footprint into life cycle analyses. This by no means will make the LCA process less complicated, but it will complete the picture with respect to environmental sustainability for productsAnd lastly, we need to refine the definition of a chemical footprint or establish a quantitative unit in order to better understand improvements in a product’s sustainability profile, and also to find a common way to communicate the potential chemical risk to the stakeholders.
