European Bioplastics has recently set up a Cluster of projects and initiatives working on circular, sustainable and biobased coatings. The cluster was established in November 2025 together with the projects BIO4COAT, led by Funditec, and BLUECOAT and SUPREME, led by the University of Birmingham. The facilitator of the Cluster events and activities is European Bioplastics. A presentation on the Cluster’s future activities and the modalities for joining and taking the thematic lead of the upcoming workshops is available here.
The European Union’s sustainability agenda, driven by the Green Deal, the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability (CSS), and the Circular Economy Action Plan, promotes a systemic transition toward safe, renewable, and circular bio-based materials and processes. To turn these ambitions into practice, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) is developing a harmonised Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) framework for chemicals and materials. In the past few years, the European Commission has funded many calls for proposals requesting high-level consortia to work on the assessment based on the SSbD framework, and on the development of recommendations that can further advance the application of the SSbD framework, indicating thresholds that can support the criteria definition and improvements for the assessment of SSbD methodologies, including any specificities related to biobased surfactants. In this webinar, held on 18 November 2025, European Bioplastics brought together four of these outstanding projects to explore how the Safe and Sustainable by Design framework is being applied to the development of circular, sustainable, and biobased coatings.
The research planned in BIO4COAT and implemented in IRISS, BIO-SUSHY, and TORNADO provides valuable insights into biobased coatings and their potential adoption.
The proceedings of the workshop with links to the presentations and recordings are available in open access. Some of the key messages from this workshop are the following
- Data gaps hinder SSbD implementation – Materials not covered by Classification, Labelling and Packaging (CLP) lack toxicological data, leading to underestimation of real risks and hampering proper safety assessment within the SSbD framework.
- Computational tools need expansion – Current QSAR models are inadequate for polymers, mixtures, and nanoparticles, limiting the ability to predict safety profiles for innovative biobased materials without extensive testing.
- Early SSbD adoption reduces compliance risks – Proactive integration of SSbD principles from the design stage helps the industry avoid long-term regulatory challenges and supports smoother market deployment of sustainable innovations.
- Digital Product Passports enable regulatory oversight – DPP implementation provides policymakers with transparent, verifiable access to standardized sustainability and safety data across product lifecycles, supporting evidence-based regulation. The DPP implementation enables traceability, transparency, and data-driven oversight, fostering the implementation of the SSbD framework. It highlights the regulatory value of early SSbD adoption, helping prevent compliance gaps and accelerating the uptake of safe and sustainable innovations.
- Cross-sector harmonization is essential – The SSbD framework requires refinement for different material types and sectors, with scoring systems that accurately reflect safety-sustainability trade-offs rather than defaulting to “safe” classifications when data is absent.
- Research-industry-policy alignment accelerates transition – Clustering initiatives and collaborative platforms strengthen coherence between research outputs, industrial scalability considerations, and policy requirements, creating a unified pathway toward safer, circular coatings.
- Proceedings of the workshop: https://zenodo.org/records/17708823
- Agenda of the workshop and links to presentations: https://www.european-bioplastics.org/bio4coat-webinar-on-safe-and-sustainable-by-design-for-coatings/
- Recordings: Part 1 https://youtu.be/pEcDa8qlurU Part 2 https://youtu.be/CVzHcL7xfB0
- How to become a Cluster member: https://zenodo.org/records/17649039
Contact us for more information about the Cluster and the upcoming activities:
Estela Lopez-Hermoso and Chiara Bearzotti
