Advanced materials promise technical solutions to support sustainable transformation. They play an important role for a variety of environmental topics worked on at UBA, such as energy transition, circular economy and chemical safety. Various sectors can benefit from the use of advanced materials, but they can also face challenges. The UBA position paper describes the area of tension between the promising use and possible challenges for environmental and health protection and other sustainability dimensions, illustrates this with various examples and derives corner stones for a safe and sustainable life cycle of advanced materials.
Neuartige Materialen versprechen technische Lösungen zur Unterstützung der nachhaltigen Transformation. Sie spielen eine wichtige Rolle für eine Vielzahl der am UBA bearbeiteten Umweltthemen wie beispielsweise die Energiewende, Kreislaufwirtschaft und Chemikaliensicherheit. Dabei können die verschiedenen Bereiche durch den Einsatz neuartiger Materialien profitieren, aber auch vor Herausforderungen gestellt werden. Das UBA-Positionspapier beschreibt das Spannungsfeld zwischen dem vielversprechenden Einsatz und möglichen Herausforderungen für den Umwelt- und Gesundheitsschutz und anderen Nachhaltigkeitsdimensionen, verdeutlicht dies an verschiedenen Beispielen und leitet Eckpunkte für ein sicheren und nachhaltigen Lebenszyklus von neuartigen Materialien ab.
The project activities described in this report comprise a literature review, expert interviews, an online survey, desk research on relevance criteria and the organisation of the first of three thematic conferences that will take place in the context of this project. Based on the gathered information and experiences, advanced materials were clustered into different groups. Each group was characterised in form of factsheets. At the first conference, clustering approaches were discussed as well as the need to "define" advanced materials and aspects of including safety considerations into material design. A number of advanced material types were identified that could be of relevance with regard to chemical safety. This could, for example, be due to indications of hazards and risks that might require adequate risk management or due to insufficient regulatory coverage or missing risk assessment methods and tools. This report summarises the results of the project's first work package. It is discussion input to two further thematic conferences of the project as well as to discussions on approaches to cluster, describe and prioritize advanced materials in other contexts.
