State of Sustainability Report: People, Health & Safety Edition

Materials for people, health, and safety are raw materials that eliminate or replace hazardous substances in order to create safer product formulations. Essentially, these are products that do not require labels warning that they can cause harm to people or the planet. 

When the industry switches to no-hazard label materials, it ensures the health and safety of everyone who interacts with the product, including employees and end-users. 

Using materials for people, health, and safety is currently the predominant sustainability practice. Almost 80% of survey respondents are already using these materials, and another 7% intend to introduce them within the next three years. 

Some countries already have even higher adoption of these materials. Ninety percent of French and German respondents and 85% of US respondents report already using materials for people, health, and safety.

“At IMCD Industrial Solutions, these materials are the crux of our Sustainable Solutions,” says Casper Rem, Business Unit Manager in Industrial Solutions, IMCD Benelux. “We follow a methodology that first assesses criteria for people, health, and safety, and we maintain that a material cannot be deemed sustainable without this. This allows us to confidently recommend sustainable solutions to our customers that are truly better for people and the planet.”

Regulatory compliance is the leading force behind the use of no-hazard labels materials, by a significant margin. Thirty-eight percent of respondents named this their primary driver, compared to just 16% who chose customer/consumer demand and 13% who selected environmental impact. While employee safety was not offered as an answer choice, several respondents selected “other” and wrote it in.  

These materials provide significant added value both in regulatory compliance (59%) and in meeting internal compliance goals (38%). 

Unsurprisingly, while regulatory compliance propels the use of materials for health and safety, regulations also prove a challenge in this area. Twenty-four percent of the users of these materials called regulations their top challenge in the health and safety category. This puts it just behind functionality (called the top challenge by 27%) and pricing (26%). Availability can also cause issues, with 17% calling it their most significant challenge. 

“New regulations and standards require us to be vigilant,” states Rem. “We work closely with our customers and suppliers to ensure we think beyond the material itself, but also the functionality, technical performance, and how it impacts the people using these materials.”

The vast majority of those who intend to use no-hazard label materials are already doing so, but those who aren’t struggle with a lack of current customer / consumer demand (27%), not knowing which materials to use (20%), and materials that don’t have the right technical performance (20%). 

Those who are not yet using materials for health and safety but intend to in the near future say that their primary drivers will be environmental impact (20%) and availability (20%). 

The proportion of people using no-hazard labels materials in the Americas and EMEA is quite similar, and regulatory compliance is the key driver in both regions. Drilling down a little further, technical performance is a larger factor in the Americas, with 21% calling it the primary driver in this sustainability area. In EMEA, only 7% say the same. In EMEA, slightly higher proportions report customer/consumer demand and environmental impact as primary drivers than their counterpoints in the Americas do. 

Functionality is the most common issue in EMEA, where 30% report it as their primary challenge, compared to just 21% in the Americas. In contrast, no-hazard label materials users in the Americas have more concerns around pricing (33% compared to EMEA’s 23%) and regulations (28% compared to EMEA’s 22%). 

Availability is a lesser challenge, but more prominent in EMEA, with 19% calling it their primary issue, compared to just 12% in the Americas.  

Midsize companies (100 to 1,000 employees) are the most likely to use materials for people, health, and safety already. Eighty-two percent of respondents from this category say they use no-hazard label materials, compared to 78% at smaller businesses and 75% at the largest companies. Regulatory compliance is the top driver of using no-hazard label materials by companies of all sizes. 

Respondents from all companies with more than 100 employees are more likely to cite competitive advantage as their main driver than those who work at smaller businesses. Eleven percent of those who work at companies with more than 1,000 employees called this the primary driver of their adoption of materials for health and safety, compared to 2% of midsize companies and 6% of businesses with fewer than 100 employees. In contrast, companies with fewer than 100 employees were driven by environmental impact more than larger companies. Seventeen percent of respondents from companies with fewer than 100 employees called this their primary driver, compared to 9% at midsize companies and 7% at large companies. 

Respondents from the chemical intermediates sector are far more likely to report regulatory compliance as their primary driver of using materials for health and safety than those from any other industry sector. 

In terms of challenges, those in the materials technologies sector were more likely to call functionality their primary struggle compared to those in other sectors, and less likely to cite issues with regulations than those in other sectors.

Survey respondents predict that materials for people, health, and safety will be the second-most impactful sustainability area in the coming years, behind only renewable source materials. Twenty-two percent think this area could be the most impactful of all. 

People, health, and safety is an area where most in the industry feel they have some level of knowledge: only 17% called themselves beginners. (An additional 7% said this area was not applicable to them.) While 45% called themselves novices in the topic, 30% feel that they are experts. These ratings make sense given the high uptake of no-hazard label materials in the industry already. 

Given the high level of current use of these materials, ongoing sustainable impact will require the businesses already using materials for health and safety to continue to expand and perfect their use.