MONET 2030: Hazardous chemicals

SDG 12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns

Goal description

«[…] Sustainable consumption and production aims at “doing more and better with less,” increasing net welfare gains from economic activities by reducing resource use, degradation and pollution along the whole lifecycle, while increasing quality of life. It involves different stakeholders, including business, consumers, policy makers, researchers, scientists, retailers, media, and development cooperation agencies, among others. […]»

Swiss target 12.4: Constant care is taken to ensure that throughout their life-cycle, chemicals have no unacceptable impacts on the environment and on human health.

Significance of the indicator
The indicator shows how many substances are officially classified by the regulating authorities as either dangerous or of very high concern for humans and/or the environment based on the available data. Subsequently, these substances and preparations containing such substances must be labelled as dangerous chemicals and must come with certain safety instructions. This is to prevent exposure with unacceptable effects on the environment and/or human health. In terms of sustainable development, an increase in the number of listed dangerous substances and substances of very high concern is to be seen as positive. This is because knowledge about such substances is a prerequisite for being able to take risk reduction measures. In the longer term, however, stabilisation should be sought by developing chemicals that do not have such hazardous properties.

Help for interpretation
The entries are cumulative over the years, i.e. they are added up year by year.
The indicator does not provide any information on the use or presence of the listed substances in air, water and soil.

International comparability
Comparable lists mainly exist in the EU, where the "no data − no market" principle applies. However, as such the indicator is not directly comparable with the Eurostat indicator.

Synthesis

Comments: Synthesis of the observed trends for dangerous substances (DS) and substances of very high concern (SVHC).
The assessment of each variable is expressed by a value without dimension (-1 for a negative assessment, 0 for an unchanged assessment, +1 for a positive assessment). These values are then added up and the result sets the general trend of the indicator.

The indicator records the annual number of substances and substance groups officially listed as either dangerous or of very high concern to humans and/or the environment in Annexes 2.1 and 3 of the Chemicals Ordinance (ChemO).

Swiss target 12.4: Constant care is taken to ensure that throughout their life-cycle, chemicals have no unacceptable impacts on the environment and on human health.

International target 12.4: By 2020, achieve the environmentally sound management of chemicals and all wastes throughout their life cycle, in accordance with agreed international frameworks, and significantly reduce their release to air, water and soil in order to minimize their adverse impacts on human health and the environment.