• Date 2021-03-31

This UBA-report is provided in the scope of the project “Advancing REACH”, funded by the research plan of the German Ministry of the Environment. The project aims to develop options to improve the (implementation of) the REACH regulation by analysing various REACH processes and related issues, including substitution, sustainable chemistry, precautionary principle, articles, cost-benefit analyses, socio-economic analyses and financing ECHA.

Substitution is the use of less hazardous alternatives for substances of concern. The support of substitution is an important instrument in REACH to ensure a high level of protection for human health and the environment. It is not only the authorisation and restriction procedures in REACH that address this issue. Other elements of REACH also support substitution – e.g. high-quality data on substance properties and uses from substance registrations and substance evaluations.

The report elaborates recommendations on how REACH can support functional substitution more than hitherto. The recommendations range from suggestions for making REACH processes more efficient to national monitoring of production and consumption of selected problematic substances.

The report „Advancing REACH - REACH and substitution“ (January 2021) can be found here:
https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/publikationen/advancing-reach-reach-substitution