The Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) is a global organisation committed to advancing environmental science and science-informed decision-making. Every year, SETAC holds a conference in Europe. This year’s took place in Vienna, Austria, and was attended by over 2700 delegates from 38 countries. The SETAC conference aims to broaden the discussion on, and develop ideas around, the planetary crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.
In addition to this, a specific theme is decided for each year. This year’s theme was: “Innovation for Tomorrow: Progress in Safe and Sustainable Concepts”, i.e. a focus on advancing Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) principles and applying cutting-edge science not only to chemicals and products, but also to broader challenges like sustainable urban planning and land use. SSbD is a systemic approach that aims to integrate safety, sustainability, and functionality into products and processes throughout their life cycle, from design to end-of-life, while also considering the potential of reuse and recycling (circularity).
Ecomatters attended the 35th annual conference alongside our partners ARCHE Consulting. Through our attendance, we were able to join the discussion and offer and gain valuable insights from the various presentations taking place. The conference also provided an invaluable opportunity to meet inspiring individuals and organisations, and to be part of a broader community of environmental science practitioners and researchers.
Ecomatter’s managing director, Max Sonnen, had this to say following the event:
“The SETAC conference was a great success. It is a great community to be part of and it was nice to spend time there with our ARCHE Consulting colleagues. I was happy to engage with so many of my old friends and excited to make some new friends. I also saw lots of interesting presentations on LCA, SSbD and other related topics, many on topics very familiar for Ecomatters. I am looking forward to visiting next year.”
Our partner ARCHE Consulting gave podium presentations on the topics of phytoremediation and PFAS levels in soil and food, aquatic ecotoxicity of metal-organic mixtures in algae and European soil threshold values. ARCHE Consulting also presented multiple posters covering topics such as chemical safety in drinking water, improving tools for environmental risk assessment of metals, finding practical answers to environmental exposure assessment questions and much more. For a full list of posters and presentations given by ARCHE Consulting, see here.
In addition to SETAC Europe, Ecomatters will also be attending the 12th International Conference on Life Cycle Management (LCM 2025) in September. Here we will give two presentations. The first will discuss key developments, challenges, benefits, drawbacks, and lessons from the practical implementations of the Environmental Footprint methods. These insights will be examined with the aim of supporting future-proof legislation and industry operations taking into account both existing and upcoming European legislation and policy. The other will present our findings from an investigation into different End-of-Life allocation approaches within polymer recycling. We will also be joined at LCM 2025 by ARCHE Consulting.
