Actively working to ensure that all of our products are safe
At Repsol, we bring innovative products to the market that provide countless advantages to our daily lives. Safety is non-negotiable to us, so we manage the potential risks associated with the use of our products for the people who will handle them.
We start by identifying the possible adverse effects on people and the environment. Keeping all the uses of the product in mind, we then evaluate the risks and decide on the best measures to ensure that it can be handled safely and with no negative impacts.
Safety throughout the product life cycle
Managing safety throughout the life cycle of our products is a key aspect for Repsol. Safety is present in the design and supply stage, right up until the time we make our product available to customers on the market.
For pharma or food packaging applications of products produced by our Chemicals area, we have defined Food Safety Principles that give rise to very specific criteria for each stage in the process in accordance with market demand.
Meeting the most stringent product safety regulations
Product safety is highly regulated worldwide. In Europe, we have created a single system based on international agreements and the Globally Harmonized System (GHS).
First, there is the CLP Regulation, which establishes standards for classifying, labeling, and packaging chemical products. Then there is the REACH Regulation relative to the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemical Substances for improving awareness of the dangers and effects of the chemical products on the market to humans and the environment.
Our information and labeling procedures include providing information on the origin of product components, content of the substance that could have a potential environmental or health impact, information on how to safely use a product, and instructions on how to safely dispose of a product.
Effectively communicating safety information to all our stakeholders and ensuring that it is understood is key to the company. This communication is done mainly through different documents addressed to:
We can also gain a deeper understanding of the potential adverse effects on people and the environment and minimize them through ecodesign processes, a methodology for which we have opted to evaluate some of our products in development phases.
Ecodesign is a methodology which, based on life cycle analysis, evaluates, proposes, and prioritizes improvement actions for the purpose of reducing environmental impacts and improving product sustainability, from the generation of its constituent raw materials to the management thereof at the end of their useful life.
The analysis offers a set of internationally recognized metrics increasingly demanded by the governments of the different countries where Repsol operates. Additionally, it offers the opportunity of communicating our achievements to society and differentiating our products from the competition.
Ecodesign allows us to achieve the following challenges:
Ecodesign is one of the lines of work that make up Repsol's Circular Economy Strategy.