The Blog

The UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs ( Defra) organized last year a series of stakeholders workshops to inform on its long-anticipated chemicals strategy. Our colleague Nicola Kaye, REACHLaw UK Consultant,  attended these workshops to get the latest updates on upcoming actions from the UK government to address priority chemicals issues, chemical regulation, managing of chemicals throughout their lifecycle and sustainable chemistry. Recently Defra has shared the summaries of these workshops highlighting once again their commitment to publishing a Chemicals Strategy in 2023 with the aim to tackle chemicals of concern in the UK  by managing substances sustainably and addressing barriers to reuse and recycling.

Furthermore, Defra has also shared with the participants of the workshops the UK Government’s Environmental Improvement Plan 2023 which includes 10 different goals covering vision and principles, innovation and sustainable chemistry, priority chemicals issues among other topic areas. ( See the full plan here: Environmental Improvement Plan (publishing.service.gov.uk))

 In today’s post we would like to share with you some highlights regarding Goal No. 4 “Managing exposure to chemicals and pesticides” of the Environmental Improvement Plan 2023:

 Objective:

• The UK Government aims to make sure that chemicals are safely used and managed, and that levels of harmful chemicals entering the environment ( incl. through agriculture) are significantly reduced.

 To achieve Goal #4 the UK Government has committed to certain actions. Here is a list of some of them:

• Publish a new Chemicals Strategy in 2023
• Continue to use UK REACH to evaluate and manage risks posed by chemicals to human health and the environment
• Improve their understanding of chemicals in the environment, building their prioritisation and early warning system to ensure regulation is targeted at the greatest risk
• Publish a revised UK national action plan for the sustainable use of pesticides
• Support partners to manage waste streams that are contaminated with Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) 
• And more….

REACHLaw UK is following closely on the developments of UK Chemicals Strategy including helping companies to comply with UK REACH registration requirements. As you can see UK REACH is having a key role in both UK chemicals Strategy and UK Government Environmental Improvement Plan 2023. Feel free to contacts us at sales@reachlaw.fi for support.