Product sustainability and responsibility
The responsibility for the safety of the products Solvay provides to its customers is essential all along the life cycle of products, down to their end-of-life and recycling. This is reflected in the important efforts to identify and communicate accurately about the potential dangers of some of Solvay products and the ways to manage the associated risks, according to all existing regulations, and in line with our Responsible Care Policy.
Product stewardship
We take an active part in controlling the risks of our products by ensuring their proper management through initiatives such as:
- Providing customers with full information about the properties of our products, their conditions of use, safe storage, distribution, disposal and recycling.
- Delivering specific and in-depth support such as training sessions and site visits for industrial products.
- Worldwide phone assistance in case of an accident or incident with our products during transport, through Carechem 24 (dedicated phone numbers indicated in all our safety data sheets – section 1.4).
- Highly integrated industrial complexes to reduce transport, energy use and improve recycling.
Safety all along the life cycle of our products
We play an active part in ensuring product safety throughout its entire lifecycle – from the acquisition of raw materials to disposal – to minimize potential adverse impacts on people and the environment.
Going one step further, we also help our customers calculate the Lifecycle Assessments (LCAs) of a given application made with our products by providing eco-profiles. Extensive eco-profiles are available for the largest part of Solvay products (“cradle to gate” approach).
Regulatory compliance
We are committed to meeting regulatory compliance for product safety and fulfilling Classification Labeling Packaging (CLP) obligations in the application of the Globally Harmonized System (GHS) for all our substances and mixtures.
We meet and stay current with REACH and REACH-like obligations for all our products to ensure a high level of protection of human health and the environment.
A detailed compliance review has to be performed for sensitive applications to ensure all relevant applicable regulations and Solvay’s standards are applied to avoid potential liability impact (e.g. SMILE program dedicated to the analysis of polychlorinated biphenyls and dioxines in products sold in sensitive applications).
This compliance review covers all relevant activities and business processes along the product lifecycle. In particular any new activity – i.e. new development, new application of existing product, new product, new legislation, new country – must be covered. This also applies to any sensitive use discovered for an existing product.
Risk monitoring
The Solvay Product Safety Management Process identifies risks relating to products marketed by Solvay. All Global Business Unit (GBU) use this process, which involves prioritizing the required risk assessments in the product portfolio and carrying out risk assessments for the most sensitive product applications. A Product Safety Management System is applied in every GBU.
Solvay goes beyond regulatory requirements through its Substance Risk Monitoring (S-SRM) methodology, which helps identify substances that are undergoing a regulatory phase-out process (“black” S-SRMs) or could become subject to future authorization or restriction (“red” S-SRMs). This approach supports the progressive replacement of substances of concern where feasible through analysis of safer alternatives (ASA).
| Solvay Substance Risk Monitoring (S-SRM) | Unit | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|
Share of net sales made with marketed products containing black and red S-SRMs above 0.1% w/w | % | 1.9 | 1.6 |
Black and red S-SRMs in marketed products above 0.1% w/w | Number | 26 | 18 |
Analysis of Safer Alternatives (ASA) | Number | 20 | 20 |
| Number | 5 | 10 |
| Number | 12 | 7 |
| Number | 3 | 3 |
Key Documents
- Responsible Care Policy
- REACH / REACH-Like Regulation
- Safety Data Sheets (SDS)
- Hazardous Substances / Solvay - Substances Risk Monitoring List (S-SRMs)
- Ethical Animal Testing