The second year with IRISS

Another year of the IRISS project, The International Ecosystem for Accelerating the Transition to Safe-and-Sustainable-by-Design Materials, Products and Processes, has passed – a year filled with co-creation, collaboration and community building.

IRISS' partners have contributed to raising awareness and insights on the SSbD concept through participation in events, conferences, dialogues, and collaborative meetings. During the past year, we have identified challenges and possible solutions for implementing SSbD in practice. The outcomes have been published in two scientific articles, several reports and orally presented in various workshops and seminars.

The first Value Chain specific roadmaps have been developed and the SSbD Supportive Roadmap will be finalized in the next months. Through the arrangement of different events and trainings, IRISS has had an opportunity to reach out to various stakeholders and has contributed to knowledge building and sharing. Almost all activities within the project include valuable contributions from and interaction with the value chains.

Through regular dialogue with the European Commission and JRC, the project has gained a better understanding of the implementation of the EU SSbD Framework and has been able to contribute with an industrial perspective. We are also planning to contribute to the second testing period of the framework, ongoing until the end of August 2024, through feedback from multiple case studies conducted by the value chains. During the past year, several new SSbD-related projects have been launched, supported by the European Commission. These will result in extensive knowledge reinforcement and the development of practical methods and tools for SSbD assessment. Reaching out to these projects and disseminating their results is essential for the IRISS community.

Our focus has also been on the development of the IRISS SSbD Community Platform, which will enable continuous collaboration opportunities between stakeholders as well as knowledge and best practice sharing. The platform will be launched during the ‘Accelerating the Industrial Transition with Safe-and-Sustainable-by-Design’ event on the 28th of May 2024, where industrial implementation of SSbD will be presented and discussed.

Now we are looking forward to the next, and final, year of the project, focusing on further development of the roadmaps and SSbD guidelines for different stages of product development, and strengthening the community collaborations. Let’s continue building the IRISS SSbD community together!

In May, the annual IRISS newsletter was published, summarizing key events and activities from the second year, as well as highlighting upcoming events.

Explore the newsletter here. External link, opens in new window.