The new open-architecture system gives apparel brands and suppliers five common metrics for measuring chemical disclosure, hazard knowledge and progress toward verified safer chemistry.
The Safer Chemistry Impact Fund (SCI Fund) has launched a standardized framework for measuring chemical hazards across products and supply chains, addressing a persistent weakness in corporate sustainability: companies can track carbon emissions systematically, but chemical-risk performance remains far less comparable.
Released on August 18, 2026, the Safer Chemistry Impact Metrics Framework converts chemical inventory and hazard information into quantitative indicators that companies can benchmark and track over time. Importantly for textiles, the methodology has undergone three years of practical implementation across apparel and footwear, alongside beauty and personal care, consumer electronics and the built environment.
Five metrics create a common baseline
The framework measures five core indicators: the percentage of chemicals disclosed; percentage sufficiently characterised to receive a hazard rating; percentage verified as safer or low concern; percentage classified as chemicals of concern; and percentage remaining uncharacterised because hazard information is insufficient.
Chemicals are classified through hazard bands A–F. Bands A–C represent verified safer or lower-concern chemistry, while D–F indicate chemicals of concern. Chemicals without adequate data receive a “?” designation rather than being assumed safe.
That last distinction is commercially important. It reduces the risk of regrettable substitution, where a restricted substance is replaced with a poorly studied chemical rather than one demonstrated to be safer.
From compliance lists to measurable progress
The framework is not a certification scheme or regulatory requirement. Instead, SCI Fund intends it as a common measurement architecture supporting procurement, product stewardship, target setting, sustainability reporting and chemical substitution decisions.
For textile brands, dyehouses, chemical formulators and mills, this could shift chemical management beyond simply demonstrating compliance with restricted-substance requirements. Companies could quantify how much of their chemistry is actually characterised and how the share of safer chemistry changes year by year.
SCI Fund is backed by seed funding from Apple, Google and the Forsythia Foundation, while its Chemical Hazard Data Trust is managed by ChemFORWARD.
The next test will be adoption: whether brands begin requesting these metrics from textile suppliers and whether chemical-hazard performance becomes a routinely reported KPI alongside carbon, water and traceability.
