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The need for much more information on which chemicals are in finished products featured highly in a panel discussion at this week's Chemical Watch Global Business Summit in Amsterdam.

Looking back over ten years of international chemicals management – and forward to the next ten – several members of the panel said there is a growing need for a system to provide such information.

Timo Unger, environmental affairs manager at Hyundai Motor Europe, recognised the value of UN Environment Programme (Unep) guidelines, tools and processes in different sectors. But, he said "it's likely that industry will start to recognise the need for a harmonised way to collect information across many sectors, as it will be more efficient and cost effective. In ten years from now, if we have one or two or three common standards, we will be able to collect data in simple and complex supply chains, and share data between different sectors."

Cefic director of REACH and chemicals policy, Erwin Annys, agreed: "The chemical industry will continue to be a provider of solutions. When confronted with [the question] 'where are our chemicals in products?' we need not only a harmonised solution, but a globally harmonised solution, because we are importing articles from all over the world."

Achim Halpaap, head of Unep’s chemicals and waste branch, called for a common approach to defining safety globally and "doing away with two worlds, where one has top class products that are safe, and the other has second class products. We want a global system to bring all countries to a high level of chemicals management and a mechanism at a global level to start harmonising our risk management procedures."

Anna Lennquist, senior toxicologist at NGO ChemSec, said the trend for more information and transparency will continue under regulations like REACH, as well as from industry and voluntary measures. "We need better supply chain information; people need to know what they are dealing with in order to handle it correctly."

Needs of SMEs

Susanne Baker, head of environment and compliance at trade group TechUK, said SMEs must not be left behind in the discussion and debate around REACH. Research done in 2012 by her previous employer EEF, the UK manufacturers federation, found that SMEs were "terrified" by the Regulation's complexity. Trade groups in member states, she said, need to raise awareness and communicate with SMEs, as well as feed their concerns back to member states and the European Commission. Without an engaged SME community, she said, "we were in danger of seeing supply chains collapse and SME business models being undermined in the longer term."

Dow Chemical's global product safety and compliance director, Lorraine Francourt, predicted that automation and digitisation would see the loss of many traditional jobs – but she said the younger generation should focus their attention on solving the world's challenges, including responding to the chemicals in products question.

She is also hopeful that the circular economy would be a success, and as a result, fewer raw materials would be consumed.

Circular economy centre stage

Greenpeace campaign strategist Yannick Vicaire urged the European Commission to set up a directorate general to oversee the circular economy agenda,. It should have, he said, divisions covering areas such as clean production, green chemistry, producer responsibility and business model change.

Frustrated by what he sees as insufficient progress under the REACH authorisation framework, he urged member states to do more.

Mr Annys said that overall, he has been impressed by the pace at which Echa has reached decisions under REACH, praising the agency's "extremely holistic approach, reflecting the fact that many of the parts of REACH – whether it be registration, evaluation or risk management – impact each other".

Cutting through complexity was a key theme for Bjorn Hansen, head of DG Environment's chemicals unit. "Very often," he said, "we just get drowned by so much information that we forget, or we don't see, what are the really important bits. You can only say that when you have made mistakes over the years."

The day REACH was adopted was memorable, he said. "It contained 80% of the ideas we put into it. It was based on a lot of years of experience."