A chemicals manufacturer’s ESG exposure sits mainly in process safety, emissions to air and water, hazardous waste and product stewardship. The SASB Chemicals standard, version 2023-12, names twelve disclosure topics for the industry, against an average of six disclosure topics per industry across the Standards as a whole. Twelve topics means twelve evidence trails, many of them plant level and continuous.
The Chemicals standard is one of 77 industry standards in the SASB set, which the International Sustainability Standards Board has been responsible for since August 2022. Chemicals sits in the Resource Transformation sector, carries the metric code prefix RT-CH, and its effective version is 2023-12, which applies to annual periods beginning on or after 1 January 2025.
Where the exposure concentrates
The industry description explains the length of the list. Entities in the industry transform organic and inorganic feedstocks into more than 70,000 diverse products, and the industry is commonly segmented into basic (commodity) chemicals, agricultural chemicals and specialty chemicals. A reactive process run continuously at scale concentrates much of that list at the plant boundary, and the twelve topic names reflect it.
| Exposure cluster | Topics named in the Chemicals standard |
|---|---|
| Process and operational safety | Operational Safety, Emergency Preparedness & Response; Workforce Health & Safety |
| Pollution and resource use | Air Quality; Water Management; Hazardous Waste Management |
| Climate and energy | Greenhouse Gas Emissions; Energy Management |
| Product stewardship | Safety & Environmental Stewardship of Chemicals; Product Design for Use-phase Efficiency; Genetically Modified Organisms |
| Licence to operate | Community Relations; Management of the Legal & Regulatory Environment |
The standard sets the twelve out as one list. The grouping above is a reading aid rather than a structure the standard itself defines.
What the topic list does not settle
Three limits matter when the list is used to scope a programme.
1. It is a disclosure standard, not an Indian regulatory requirement. A SASB topic list must never be presented as though SEBI or the MCA had mandated it. 2. GRI has released no Sector Standard for chemicals. The sector appears in Group 2 Industrial of the prioritised sectors list approved on 19 November 2025, defined as manufacturing of chemical products including plastics and fertilizers, but no standard has been published. 3. Amendments are proposed, not enacted. Exposure Draft SASB/ED/2025/1 of July 2025, on which comments closed on 30 November 2025, proposes targeted amendments to a further 41 SASB Standards on greenhouse gas emissions, energy management, water management, labour practices and workforce health and safety. Chemicals appears in those targeted amendment tables at metric level, and the twelve topic names are untouched.
Sources: SASB Chemicals Standard, version 2023-12, GRI list of prioritized sectors, approved 2025
ESG solutions covers scoping a site against a named topic list and structuring the evidence an independent assurer or a buyer will later test. The ESG guide sets out the wider disclosure sequence a manufacturer moves through. The same ranked exposure areas and named gaps can be produced ahead of the first data collection.