AkzoNobel has collaborated with some of its value chain partners to collectively reduce carbon emissions in the fields of circular solutions, process efficiency, and solvent reduction. Five teams have been established following a recent Discovery Day, where results and learnings were presented from the first phase of the company’s Paint the Future Collaborative Sustainability Challenge.

AkzoNobel says this has now set in motion the next phase of its initiative, which was launched with 28 partners – including customers, suppliers, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and academia – in May 2022. Since then, the company says various teams have been working on possible solutions to a series of challenges that need to be overcome to help limit climate change.

A total of five agreed projects will now progress, with AkzoNobel involved in the following:

• Circular solutions – Helping the coatings industry take sustainability into account by identifying potential value proposition-based metrics that could be used to measure sustainability of products and promote sustainable choices
• Process efficiency – Helping raw material suppliers to realize disruptive new process technologies that enable sustainable product solutions by proposing working models that share risks along the value chain
• Solvent emissions – Helping the marine coatings industry to provide products to the market with minimal solvent applications by campaigning for solutions for a faster decarbonization of the value chain
• Circular solutions – Helping the paints and coatings value chain to increase the share and trust in sustainable raw materials by establishing a framework to categorize and create a common understanding of the benefits and limitations of sustainable raw materials
• Solvent emissions – Helping partners in the European paints and coatings value chain to advance the reduction of solvent emissions by publicly disclosing third-party assured data on solvent usage as input for Lifecycle Assessments

“I’m proud of what we’ve been able to achieve with partners from across the value chain,” said Wijnand Bruinsma, AkzoNobel’s director of Sustainability. “Multiple collaborations relating to sustainability have started among parties who wouldn’t normally work directly together. Now we’re transitioning to the next phase, and we have the right parties in place to bring us closer to our mutual goal of reducing carbon emissions.”

For more information, visit: www.akzonobel.com.