Collaborations
Resilience 24 “Development of safe and sustainable by design alternatives (IA) – RESILIENCE-01-24
The European Commission’s Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) initiative aims to guide the development of new chemicals and materials that are inherently safer and more sustainable throughout their lifecycle.
This framework is central to achieving the EU’s ambitions for a green and resilient industry, as outlined in the Green Deal and the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability.
This call focuses on replacing hazardous substances—such as surfactants, flame retardants, and plasticisers—with SSbD-aligned alternatives for industrial applications where substitution is currently limited or only just beginning. The five EU-projects funded under this topic AlchemiSSts, BIOSAFIRE, DESIDERATA, PLANETS, RADAR, are developing new chemical substances and materials that:
Are designed from the outset to be safe and sustainable (following the SSbD framework)
Reduce environmental and climate impacts
Are suitable for real-world industrial applications, targeting areas with critical needs for substitution
Integrate proof-of-concept demonstrations to validate SSbD principles
Techno-economic and socio-economic analyses to justify the selected substances
Business models and exploitation strategies to ensure market viability
Data sharing interoperability across the full value chain
Each project brings together experts from across the value chain (e.g, material developers, industry end-users, social scientists, technology providers, regulators and standardisation bodies) to work on identifying and overcoming barriers to substitution, address challenges in adapting existing production lines and communicate benefits (of SSbD materials) clearly to citizens and stakeholders.
This initiative represents a major step toward an industrial ecosystem that is safer, more circular, and climate-neutral, supporting the broader EU strategies on zero pollution and resource efficiency, helping to shape the next generation of industrial chemicals and materials, ensuring Europe remains a leader in responsible innovation, and delivering practical, market-ready solutions that balance economic, environmental, and social needs.
Collaboration activities
The five sister projects will collaborate on identified “joint topics” (e.g. SSbD, education, DPP, etc.) which will be led by nominated experts from each project. Regular meetings of the coordinating team, as well as meetings on joint topics, will be organised to align work, exchange knowledge, as well as plan further collaboration. Several activities are planned to be organised jointly (e.g., webinars, conference sessions, consultations with the EU-JRC, etc.).
To amplify impact, these projects are encouraged to collaborate and develop synergies with projects from the HORIZON-CL4-2021-RESILIENCE-01-08 and HORIZON-CL6-2023-ZEROPOLLUTION call topics, environmental and health-related initiatives from, Open Innovation Test Beds (OITBs) for sustainable production, national and regional programmes across Europe, as well as relevant Horizon Europe Missions. These collaborations are vital to refine the SSbD framework, accelerate adoption, and support cross-sector innovation.
Involvement/contribution in NSC WGs
This sister project group is actively contributing to the NSC at various levels, providing input to all three working groups. Martin Himly (PLANETS) is chairing the working group on education, training and communication, and Wendel Wohlleben (BASF) is co-chairing the working group on SSbD. Other project members strengthen the connection with the network. BNN is a member of the Coordination Team and attends NSC Steering Group meetings (Andreas Falk), as well as being part of the Communication Team (Beatriz Alfaro).
Contribution to the WG on Education, Training & Communication
Leading, participating/(co-)organising events, webinars workshops relevant for the SSbD Community. Some example include:
– Venice Training School (co-organisation and oral presentations at the 13th edition of the School titled Innovating with Purpose: A Hands-on Journey into Functional, Safe and Sustainable Advanced Materials, held on 9-13 June 2025 in Venice, IT, active role in the organisation of future editions). The RESILIENCE-24 projects significantly helped shape the most interactive hands-on style of the 13th Venice Training School, where many of the resilience cluster projects including RESILIENCE-21, -22, -23, and -24 were gathering and jointly providing frontal as well as hands-on sessions. Besides the character of a summer school for PhD students and Postdocs involved in the current projects, this one-week event has established itself as an opportunity for community-cross-educating and -harmonizing activity and it is especially for this latter reason highly attractive for, and thus well-attended by, the involved SSbD methodology developers (e.g., the RESILIENCE-21, -22, -23 projects) and implementors (e.g., the RESILIENCE-24 projects). The EC-JRC has been participating actively during the past editions for the same reason. In the 2025 edition, PLANETS introduced the scoping approach taken in their case studies. The significant focus on how to conduct scoping on real-life cases may have impacted to a certain extent some content of the current revision of the SSbD Framework. Further, QSAR methodologies were introduced by PLANETS.
– NSC Workshop – SSbD scenarios for advanced and incremental innovations (co-organisation of a series of workshops (23 June 2025, 5 December 2025), active participation in future workshops – See WG on SSbD, Innovation & Regulation for more details).
Contribution to the WG on Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD), Innovation & Regulation
Another impactful initiative driven by PLANETS through the WGs Sustainability and Education and supported by other NSC projects, is the currently running series of SSbD Scenario Workshops jointly with the RESILIENCE-22 projects, where PLANETS’ partner, Wendel Wohlleben, from BASF took the lead. This activity also created an impact on the current revision of the SSbD framework. The workshop based on the concept for “SSbD scenarios” developed within the PLANETS project. As a big outcome of the workshop, it can be mentioned that the concept of SSbD scenarios was embedded in the JRC revised framework published in August 2025.
For completion of the implementation, a second workshop on SSbD scenarios is planned for Autumn 2025.
Contribution to the WG on Research Output management, FAIRness & sharing
Coming soon.
More information on the projects can be found in CORDIS and on the websites of the different projects: AlChemiSSts, BIOSAFIRE, DESIDERATA, PLANETS, RADAR.