Legislation evolves
Legally, companies must avoid discharges and emissions of SVHCs into the air, water, and soil. If this is not possible, the discharge must be minimised as much as possible.
"In the Netherlands, more than 350,000 companies work with thousands of dangerous chemical substances. The legislation in this area is evolving, so more and more substances are being added to the SVHC list. The 29 Environmental Services in our country ensure supervision and enforcement of this," outlines Burgers.
Inspections by sampling
These regional inspections are conducted on a sampling basis, as the services do not have enough people and resources to visit every company. Moreover, manually administering and updating all those substances is impractical.
Burgers speaks from experience: "At the beginning of 2021, I was faced with the task of checking over three thousand raw materials and products, each with multiple ingredients. It was a Herculean task."
Automating SVHC control
Burgers shared his plight with his friend Mick Geerits. Together they came up with the plan to automate the SVHC control. It was a good idea and right up Geerits's alley.
"We had to design a digital system that automatically maps all the SVHCs used. This gives you an overview of which substances are where and in what quantity. Moreover, the system needed to be web-based and easy to use."
Regional environmental services
Burgers and Geerits visited regional environmental services that monitor and enforce legislation for municipalities. There they mapped out problems and possibilities with the SVHC control.
Geerits then built a prototype SVHC tool that was successfully tested. This was followed by expansions of the tool.
"The inspection of an environmental service uses the SVHC tool for effectively carrying out checks at companies to comply with legislation," says Geerits. "Upload once, as easy as attaching a file in your mailbox, and you have immediate insight into all SVHCs and the legislation."
Algorithms and machine Learning
Deconcern's SVHC tool focuses on quickly processing large amounts of data. "We do this by uploading product information sheets that state which substances are in a product. The tool reads the sheets and checks them for the presence of SVHCs," explains Geerits.
"We use smart algorithms and machine learning for this. Machine learning recognises patterns. With large language models, the tool can understand text; with computer vision, the tool can understand images."
Significant steps
development agency of Gelderland and Overijssel. The company is located in the Splendor factory in Nijmegen.
Seven environmental services are now using the SVHC instrument. "We've made significant strides. Last year, we analysed the product information sheets for these environmental services at three hundred companies," reports Geerits.
"Soon, we will talk with the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management to see how we can make legislation in the field of SVHCs more transparent."
Fast and reliable
The SVHC tool identifies all Substances of Very High Concern immediately. "For companies, the tool maps out within minutes whether and which Substances of Very High Concern are used in their business activities," says Burgers. "Everything is quick and reliable based on EU legislation."
The next step Deconcern is working on is expanding abroad. Geerits says, "We can extract increasingly relevant data from the product information sheets, to map the environmental impact of each substance in Europe in an automated way. Thus, from an overview and insight, safety also arises because the ultimate goal is that data-driven policy will reduce the use of SVHCs in the future to zero."
This testimonial was previously published in Dutch on TechGelderland.nl.