PLANETS was included in the latest BNN QUARTERLY 03/2025 entitled “Scientific Impact on Clean Manufacturing Solutions” with four articles:
The issue also advertised the upcoming 2nd NSC/PLANETS workshop on SSbD scenarios for advanced materials, and ANTHOS’26!
On 16 June 2025, Andreas Falk from BNN had the great pleasure of leading a workshop on Safe-and-Sustainable-by-Design (SSbD) for high school students at HTBLA Kaindorf in Austria.
After setting the stage about the three pillars of sustainability, the three dimensions of SSbD, its indicators and 5 steps, as a real-life SSbD implementation example Andreas introduced the case studies of the PLANETS project, which is developing safer and more sustainable alternatives for chemicals with surfactant, flame retardant or plasticising functionalities. All three of these chemical classes have a large chemical-market share, highlighting the importance of research and EU-funded projects for improving chemicals that affect our daily lives.
Many teenagers in the audience will be the engineers and scientists of tomorrow, future professionals who will play a big role for reaching the EU’s aim to become climate-neutral by 2050. With this in mind, the engagement of workshop’s participants in performing a practical exercise of Tier 1 SSbD assessment of an everyday consumer product assured us that, if we invest in educating our young people, we can shape the health of people and planet in the future!
PLANETS was included in the latest BNN QUARTERLY 02/2025 entitled “Digital Transition for Innovative Technologies” with four articles:
The issue also advertised the upcoming NSC/PLANETS workshop on SSbD scenarios for advanced materials!
Members of the scientific community from 18 partner organizations met at Minatec in Grenoble from 26-27 November 2024 to launch the Horizon Europe project PLANETS.
PLANETS stands for “Plasticizers, fLame-retardants and surfactANts: new alternatives validating the safE and susTainable by deSign approach” and is funded under the Topic HORIZON-CL4-2024-RESILIENCE-01-24.
The consortium will receive 14.5 million Euros from the European Union’s research and innovation programme to demonstrate the applicability of the SSbD Draft Framework published by the JRC while technically developing alternatives for 3 of the most important classes of molecules in chemical industries: plasticizers, flame retardants and surfactants.
The new molecules and products developed by PLANETS will be significantly safer to workers and consumers and will have considerably lower environmental impact, while ensuring economic viability and social awareness.
This ambitious project, coordinated by Commissariat a l’Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives (CEA), which hosted the Kick-Off Meeting, brings together 18 complementary partners from 7 countries, including 7 large industry partners (BASF, Chemische Fabrik Budenheim KG, ELKEM Silicones, Greenchemicals Srl, Steinbacher Dämmstoff GmbH, SYENSQO, Wacker Chemie AG), 3 SMEs (RINA Consulting, STERNA, QSAR Lab), 5 RTOs (AIMEN Technology Center, CEA, TNO, IPC, Fraunhofer ICT) and 3 non-profit research organizations (BioNanoNet Forschungsgesellschaft mbH, Paris Lodron University of Salzburg, Radboud University). These partners bring the expertise required for the entire project development, including:
PLANETS aims to significantly contribute to paving the way for the adoption of the SSbD framework while proposing a roadmap towards industrialisation and market uptake of the alternative solutions.
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