Assessments

Apply the SURPASS assessment tools, including our unique scoring calculator, to evaluate your material's performance in hazard, exposure, environmental, and economic domains.

3-Stage Assessment Approach

The SURPASS assessment methodology is built on an iterative, tiered approach that aligns with the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of your innovation. This ensures that the assessment is always relevant, practical, and proportionate to the data you have available.

Early-Stage Assessment: Sustainable Plastic Framework (SPF) Tool

For projects in the early stages of innovation, we recommend starting with the Sustainable Plastic Framework (SPF) Tool.

Tools and Methods

For more mature projects that require in-depth, quantitative analysis, the SURPASS platform offers two key resources: a comprehensive inventory of external methods and our unique scoring calculator for integrating your results.

Scoring System

The SURPASS digital infrastructure employs a unique, holistic scoring system to guide the development of next-generation polymeric materials. This system doesn't just assess safety and sustainability in isolation; it integrates them into a single, comprehensive Safe-, Sustainable-, and Recyclable-by-Design (SSRbD) approach that provides a clear picture of a material's overall performance.

This scoring methodology is built upon the Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) framework, adapting the European Commission's Safe-and-Sustainable-by-Design (SSbD) criteria specifically for polymeric materials. It serves to simplify complex, data-heavy assessments from multiple domains—Functionality, Safety, Environment, and Economics—into an actionable, traceable metric for innovators and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). The final score enables a direct comparison between an innovative solution and its conventional benchmark, facilitating rapid decision-making and the identification of "hotspots" early in the innovation process.

The Four Pillars of the SSRbD Assessment

The final, holistic SSRbD Score is an aggregation of assessments across four core pillars, each of which is evaluated in parallel from a life cycle perspective:

  1. Safety (Hazard and Exposure): Does the material pose a risk to human health or the environment?

  2. Environmental Sustainability (LCA): What are the material's impacts across its entire life cycle (e.g., climate change, resource use)?

  3. Economic Sustainability (LCC): Is the innovative product cost-competitive with the conventional alternative?

  4. Functionality: Does the new material perform its required job as well as, or better than, the conventional material?

From Raw Data to a Single Score: The Scoring Rationale

The scoring strategy is designed to ensure results from very different assessment types (e.g., toxicity tests, cost calculations, or CO₂ emissions) can be mathematically compared and combined.

1. Hazard Scoring: A Tiered, Normalised Approach

The hazard assessment strategy is multi-tiered, gathering existing data, filling gaps with modeling, and performing new in vitro (cell-based) and ecotoxicity tests.

  • Normalization: Results from numerous, disparate assays (e.g., cytotoxicity, oxidative stress, endocrine disruption) are first normalized to a common scale using expert-defined reference points. This converts different units of measure into a comparable score.

  • Pillar Calculation: The normalized scores are averaged to yield a final score for the four hazard pillars: Human Health, Genotoxicity, Endocrine Disruption, and Ecotoxicity.

  • Comparative Metric: A Difference in Performance (DiP) is then calculated. This compares the total score of the innovative material's ingredients to the total score of the conventional material's ingredients. The DiP categorizes the hazard level as "No hazard," "Small effect," "Some hazard," or "Hazard".

2. Environmental and Economic Scoring: Comparing Against a Benchmark

For the environmental (LCA) and economic (LCC) pillars, the goal is to see if the innovation improves upon the incumbent material (the reference).

  • Environmental Grouping: The 16 detailed environmental impact indicators (such as Climate Change, Ionising Radiation, and Water Use) from the Life Cycle Assessment are grouped into four simplified pillars for scoring: Climate Change, Toxicity, Resources, and Pollution.

  • The Scoring Scale: Both the environmental and economic pillar scores use a simple, qualitative scale to indicate change versus the reference product:

    • Score 3: Significant Improvement

    • Score 2: Improvement

    • Score 1: No Significant Change (Status Quo)

    • Score 0: Degradation in Performance

  • Example: If an innovative material significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions compared to the reference, it would receive a score of 3 for the "Climate Change" pillar.

3. Integration into the Final SSRbD Score

The final digital infrastructure will present these pillar scores—Functionality, Safety, Environment, and Economics—on a radar diagram. This visualization allows users to see, at a glance, the current performance versus a desired Target Baseline.

While the exact weighting of the pillars may vary based on the specific industry or application, the core logic is a multi-criteria decision-making model that allows all pillars to contribute to the overall assessment, ensuring a truly balanced Safe-, Sustainable-, and Recyclable-by-Design outcome. This is a deliberate, agile approach that allows for rapid identification of "hotspots" and corrective actions during the innovation process.