Revealed: EU to label toxic substances as 'green'

Proposals to water down European legislation will allow major investments to be labelled green and sustainable, even though the companies they support are using toxic substances in their products, ChemSec can reveal.

The small print of draft legislation published by Brussels last month contains proposals to allow thousands of substances to be categorised as “sustainable”, despite documented concerns over their health effects.

These include galaxolide, a hormone disruptor used in cosmetics and fragrances, and NBBS, a high-volume commercial plastic softener that is neurotoxic and has been found to induce spastic myelopathy in rabbits.

They also include TFA, a PFAS “forever chemical”, the build-up of which in drinking water across Europe is a major concern given fears that it damages the unborn child.

The green labelling of these substances is vital for companies seeking to tap into billions of euros in investment conditional upon products meeting the EU’s sustainability criteria.

The proposed changes to legislation are part of a wider campaign to simplify Europe’s green regulations and boost growth. The moves have encountered widespread criticism as deregulatory.

“By loosening the controls on hazardous pollution in this way, the European Commission is turning away from its Green Deal pledge to do no significant harm to human health and the environment,” said Theresa Kjell, head of policy at ChemSec, the independent chemicals watchdog. “In so doing, it is also destabilising the investment environment and therefore putting economic growth at risk.”

The changes are buried in a single paragraph of an annex to an appendix to the EU’s so-called Green Taxonomy, the aim of which is to specify which investments can be officially labelled sustainable under EU law.

According to one option contained in the proposal, only those products that contain 247 “substances of very high concern” will be ineligible for sustainable investment. This option therefore gives the green light to many thousands of chemicals over which there are documented scientific concerns, but which have yet to go through the EU’s cumbersome assessment process for substances of very high concern.

After a backlash against this proposal within the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, another option was tabled which expands the list of non-sustainable chemicals to some 1,400. These are substances which meet certain criteria for very high concern under the EU regulation covering classification, labelling and packaging.

In any case, both options would still allow investments in products containing TFA, galaxolide and NBSS – along with thousands of others – to be labelled sustainable.

“By specifying only a narrow list of harmful substances to be disqualified from sustainable investment, the proposal will also encourage ‘regrettable substitution’, whereby companies switch to substances that are chemically almost identical but technically distinct from those on the list,” Theresa Kjell said.

In February, 21 industry associations called on the EU to address the “unnecessary provisions” in this specific aspect of the Green Taxonomy that were preventing access to green finance.

At the same time, investors with €6.6 trillion assets under management requested that the EU maintain its sustainable finance framework.

Photo by Alex on Unsplash

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