Global Product Strategy

In early 2006 at the first International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM-1), ICCA introduced the Responsible Care® Global Charter and an innovative Global Product Strategy (GPS) to enhance stewardship best practices within the industry and throughout the product chain. Together, these two initiatives represent the cornerstones of our contribution to the UN-led Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM). We will be providing a substantial report on our progress at ICCM-2 in Geneva.

Through GPS, ICCA intends to harmonize global product safety assessments by establishing a balance between regulatory systems and voluntary industry initiatives such as HPV and the LRI, to provide communication to key audiences, and to proactively advocate on existing and evolving regulatory initiatives in support of government implementation.

ICCA's Global Product Strategy:

Advocates for a combination of regulations and voluntary programs consistent with our principles. Aims to harmonize global level of product safety assessment by:

• Defining a “base set of information” for chemicals in commerce
• Sharing of relevant information for safety assessment between companies
• Promoting a tiered process for evaluating risk and identifying appropriate risk management actions for chemicals in commerce
• Extending the guidance for safety assessment (e.g. ICCA Product Stewardship Guidelines) on a global scale
• Helping to define safe use conditions for chemicals and provide guidance to companies to enable them to meet safe use conditions
• Calls for measuring industry performance and public reporting
• Improves product stewardship cooperation with downstream customers of the chemical industry
• Supports partnerships with intergovernmental organizations and others to enhance product stewardship
• Enhances outreach and dialogue with customers, the public and other stakeholders

Our member associations and companies will be more transparent about their product safety assessment processes and provide access to information in a suitable format to co-producers and customers to increase public confidence that governments are fulfilling their role and industry is meeting its voluntary commitments and regulatory requirements. We will, of course, share this information with governments to meet regulatory requirements and improve industry performance in countries where such regulations are not yet in place. Along the way we will provide capacity building for smaller and medium sized enterprises in our industry, as well as downstream customers and governments in developing countries. GPS aims to reduce existing differences in the safety assessment of chemicals between developing, emerging and industrialized countries.