Chemicals of Concern
Last updated
Last updated
When evaluating the health impact of a food packaging item, the UP Scorecard essentially considers the presence of hazardous chemicals and whether they are likely to migrate from the food contact material to the food or beverage content. In more detail, the following criteria contribute to the final COC score:
Compliance statement: are there any chemicals of concern, that are intentionally added during manufacturing? We provide a list of chemicals of concern. The chemicals of concern within this list are prioritized and grouped into four tiers, where Tier 1 presents a shortlist of priority chemicals of concern to avoid, and Tiers 2, 3, and 4 present more extensive sets of chemicals that should not be used in the manufacture of food contact materials.
What is the disclosure level for the compliance statement?
Migration potential: How inert is the material?
Food/material interaction: How do the container and food interact?
By default, the UP Scorecard considers that all food contact materials contain at least one chemical of concern from Tier 1.
Compliance statement
Intentionally contains at least one COC identified in Tier 1
Yes
If the user has any information about the intentional utilization of COCs, they can declare compliance with one or more COC tiers.
Disclosure level
Supplier is unable to provide information about in-scope chemicals of concern in the materials within the foodware or packaging component
Yes
The user can support their compliance statement with different levels of reliability (from self-declaration to third-party verified declaration).
Inertness
Glass, steel & ceramic: best score All other materials: lowest score
No
See explanation.
Food and material interaction
Worst case food: hot, oily, acidic soup
Yes
Users may either select one of the predefined food or drink options, or create their own (see )
The Chemicals of Concern information can be changed when creating a new product or editing an existing product.