at the Surfex exhibition in May where he
gave a presentation on the subject.
Sustainability was a major theme among
exhibitors at the event held in Birmingham,
England, which is one of the UK’s primary
coatings shows.
“The recession has helped to fo-
cus minds on the necessity of a bet-
ter balance between the economy and
the environment,” Bowtell explained.
“Now that in the UK and other
European countries the economic re-
covery has started the advantages of
achieving this balance have become
more evident.”
Approximately 80 percent of deco-
rative paints on the UK market—with
similar high percentages in most other
European countries – are now water-
based. Although this is partly a result
of EU regulations on the reduction of
emissions of volatile organic compounds
(VOCs), it is also a response to consum-
ers’ changing attitudes.
“Waterborne decorate paints are a
reflection of consumers’ wishes for more
environmentally friendly products while
they also like their lower odour levels,”
said Bowtell.
For BCF and other European coatings
associations, an important next step in
a sustainable future is more recycling of
used paint.
“Tackling the issue of left-over paint
will be the big sustainability issue of
the next five years,” predicted Bowtell.
“Currently the average UK household
has 17 cans of unused paint in their
homes—equivalent to 56 million litres
per year much of which has been going
to landfill.”
“The best way to deal with waste
paint is to recycle it for reuse but this is
happening with only a tiny proportion at
the moment,” he added.
Most waste paint which is not disposed in landfill sites is turned into fuel,
incinerated or added to other products
like cement. A relatively small amount
is being reprocessed by a few SMEs into
‘new’ paints with blended colours and
added preservatives.
“We need a closed loop recycling
system,” Bowtell explained. “One op-
tion is to create a self-funded network of
recycled paint manufacturers which can
be set up initially with the help of indus-
try or even the government.”
The new focus on recycling is part of
moves to ensure that coating products are
sustainable throughout their life cycles
from the sourcing and making of their
raw materials through to their reuse—
more of a cradle-to-cradle than a cradle-
to-grave approach.
“At the moment much of the atten-
tion with life cycle analyses (LCA) is on
the raw materials, because with carbon
footprints of coatings, for example, 73
percent comes on average from the raw
materials.” said Bowtell. “But more work
is now being done on what happens to
the coatings products themselves once
they are on the market.”
Promoters at the Surfex exhibition
were promoting the services they are
offering in the vetting of the origin
and/or production standards of coat-
ings raw materials.
“Retail chain are putting pressure on
our customers to provide environmental information on the raw materials
in their coatings,” said Shane Phoenix,
managing director of Arpadis (UK) Ltd.,
Chester, England.
He related the difficulties of checking the source of raw materials from
China, where some suppliers show their
European distributors well equipped
and operated plants when the actual
product is made in a sub-standard
neighbouring facility.
“It’s an extension of our responsibili-
ties,” Phoenix commented. “We are now
looking beyond the prices and perfor-
mance of chemicals to their environmen-
tal compliance.”
Cornelius Group plc, Bishop’s
Stortford, England, which has branches
in China, India and in Eastern Europe,
uses sustainability questionnaires to give
a preliminary screening of suppliers,
which is followed by an on-site check by
the company’s own trained auditors.
“Sometimes as a result of the an-
swers to our questionnaire we decide
not to use a supplier without the need
for an audit,” said Natalia McDonagh,
marketing manager at Cornelius. “Our
rigorous checking system is what our
customers are now wanting because
they have to ensure that their own
products are complying with regula-
tions and meeting the individual re-
quirements of end-users.”
Product stewardship, in which play-
ers down the coatings supply chain have
responsibility for a product’s safe use, is
now becoming an increasingly important
part of sustainability.
In order to enable safety information
on products to be passed down the chain,
software and computer services companies are providing cloud computing systems for accommodating stewardship
databanks. Since cloud systems operate
through the internet on a subscription basis they can be made easily accessible as
well as be quickly updated.
“All the information from safety
data sheets (SDSs) and other risk management information can be stored in a
cloud system so that anyone in a supply chain can check it out,” explained
Simon Bradshaw, an IT solutions company at Hartlepool, England.
Although a lot of progress has been
made with sustainability in the European
coatings sector, there are still big challenges to be overcome.
After dropping by approximately a
quarter in five years, energy per tonne
of coatings production in the UK has
started to go up again. VOC emissions per tonne of output has creeping back to the levels before the 2008
financial crisis, a trend which seems
to be linked to a flattening out in reduced sales of solvents.
“While use of solvents has been
substantially reduced in decorative
paints, they are still applied exten-
sively in industrial coatings,” said
Bowtell. “The protective function
of many of these coatings cannot be
achieved without solvents. It would
be counter-productive to restrict sol-
vents in industrial coatings any more
because the overall effect would be
environmentally negative.”
Finding a means of offsetting the en-
vironmental impact of solvents in indus-
trial coatings is just one of a number of
outstanding major challenges in the sus-
tainability agenda. CW
