The meaning of life horizontal ellipsis cycles: lessons from and for safe by design studies

The concepts of Safe by Design (SbD) and Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) are receiving increasing attention. The definitions of both concepts include the term 'life cycle' in combination with the terms 'chemical', 'material' and 'product', but their meanings are not further elaborated and defined in scholarly publications on SbD/SSbD. Here, we address two research questions: (1) How are the terms chemical, material and product used and defined in the scholarly literature on SbD and SSbD; (2) How are life cycles defined and which are considered in the scholarly literature on SbD/SSbD? We found largely consistent, though still confusing, uses of the terms product, material and chemical and we found four types of life cycles in the reviewed papers. Using consistent definitions of the terms product, material and chemical, we reduce the four types of life cycles found to three types of distinctive life cycles: (1) the life cycle of a product; (2) the life cycle of a chemical in a specific product; (3) the life cycle of a chemical in all its product applications. We discuss the different trade-offs that each of these life cycle approaches can identify and argue that they are complementary and should preferably all be applied in SbD/SSbD studies.

Automated summary

This article explores the definitions and uses of terms such as chemical, material, product, and life cycle in the context of Safe by Design and Safe and Sustainable by Design. The study found consistent but confusing usage of these terms in scholarly literature, as well as the identification of four types of life cycles. By defining the terms product, material, and chemical consistently, the four types of life cycles were reduced to three distinctive types.