The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) proudly presents its landmark report, Towards Planet Positive Chemicals: A Chemical Transformation Roadmap Enabled by the Circular Economy. Developed in collaboration with nine leading chemical companies and sustainability consultancy ERM, this roadmap aims to drive transformative change across the chemical industry and downstream manufacturing value chains. 

The roadmap lays out a shared vision centered on accelerating net-zero trajectories, reversing nature loss, and ensuring a just transition for workers and communities, enabled by a circular economy and sustainable chemistry.   

Why this matters: 

The roadmap serves as a blueprint for collaboration for actors producing and relying on chemicals across value chains as well as their supporting systems (e.g. policy makers, financial institutions). 

This report is designed for decision-makers and stakeholders across value chains relying on chemicals, including business and sustainability leaders, policymakers, and financial institutions. It provides insights to craft a supportive environment so that courageous decisions can be made to move from the current supply, asset base, solutions and business models toward just, net-zero, nature-positive chemicals. It also presents opportunities to innovate new value-generation models that provide growth perspectives and create market differentiation. 

Key takeaways from the report: 

• The urgency for change: Chemicals play a pivotal role in virtually every sector from healthcare to energy, mobility or communication. However, their contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions (~6.3% in 2019) and environmental degradation are undeniable. The roadmap recognizes these challenges, calling for an urgent transformation in how chemicals are produced, used, disposed of and recycled. 

• A blueprint for collaboration with actionable pathways: The roadmap lays out a shared vision, six pathways and 33 actions to be taken by 2030 to transition toward just, net-zero, nature positive chemicals. This calls for multi-sector collaboration between chemical companies and downstream manufacturing actors, policymakers, financial institutions, and other relevant stakeholders. 

• Three imperatives for the transformation: 

1. Net-zero chemicals: Commit to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across all scopes (1, 2, and 3) by 2050. 

2. Nature-positive chemicals: Set the trajectory to halt and reverse the impact of chemicals on nature loss by 2030, with full recovery by 2050. 

3. A Just Transition for chemicals: Create transformative solutions that prioritize equity and wellbeing for workers, users and impacted communities across the entire value chain. 

• These imperatives are supported by three enablers for transformation: 

1. Empowering a circular economy: Creating the regulatory, financial, and business conditions necessary for decoupling value creation from resource consumption. 

2. Activating sustainable chemistry: Leveraging sustainable chemistry innovations to drive solutions to climate, nature, safety and equity challenges. 

3. Combatting pollution: Implementing robust frameworks to address pollution throughout the entire value chain. 

• For more information or inquiries, please contact Anne-Laure Brison, Senior Manager, Circular Chemicals.