Balancing environment impact: reducing use of VOCs

2023-09-04T14:14:40+00:00

Paints and coatings play a fundamental role in saving resources: they help reduce the environmental footprint as they extend the life cycle of many products, they delay replacement of those products, or make them more suitable for recycling.

Through their functions, paint and coatings ensure that companies and consumers can continue to thrive in the world we share.

Coatings also save valuable metals like steel and aluminium, and the fuel needed to make them, by preventing corrosion.

Can you imagine a world without coatings? Here’s what it might look like…

But we know that there is a flipside to this. The two biggest environmental effects associated with the coatings industry are the emission of VOCs during application, and the disposal of surplus materials.

What are VOCs?

VOCs, or Volatile Organic Compounds, are materials that evaporate readily from commonly occurring sources such as vehicle exhausts, cleaning agents, furniture polish and fabric softeners. These also include solvents used in coatings.

In the presence of sunlight, these VOCs can react with nitrogen oxides to create ground level ozone and photochemical smogs. In turn, this can contribute to pollution of the atmosphere.

Our industry is committed to reducing VOC emissions under international conventions. In addition, the UK has already implemented regulations in various industries, including the paint and coating sector.

The use of solvents in many industrial processes has been regulated since the 1990s.

And in the past couple of decades, we’ve taken positive steps towards greater sustainability from greatly reducing our carbon footprint and use of VOCs, to creating less waste and recycling more of what is left rather than sending it to landfill

Official government figures show that the coatings industry has reduced the amount of solvent emissions from 300kt in 1990 to 100kt in 2016, a threefold reduction in a 26-year period.

Waterborne solutions

And the industry is continually developing smarter solutions that keep us at the forefront of product compliance, sustainability and innovation. These include advanced coatings that are specifically formulated with lower volatile organic compounds (VOCs) content than their solvent-borne counterparts.

The difference between these new waterborne coatings and traditional solvent-borne is based on the liquefying agent that is used. In waterborne solutions, water is the carrier for the resin instead of a chemical-based solvent. This distinction makes waterborne coatings safer and more environmentally sound because fewer VOCs are emitted than with their solvent-borne counterparts.

Here at Nexus, we are committed to reducing our own carbon footprint. Over the last 12 months, we have increased our use of waterborne coatings by more than 40%.

And although these were driven by environmental concerns, we have been seeing added benefits from the changes we’ve been making

The use of water instead of solvent means lower toxicity and flammability, creating a healthier and safer workplace
Less coating is required to cover the same surface area as a solvent-borne coating, resulting in cost savings for us and the client
Increased performance with better adhesion to different substrates, flexibility and robustness

As we continue to embrace the circular economy, it increasingly shows that it makes sense all round.

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