HORGEN, Switzerland -- Dow Coating Materials focused on “Coatings Industry Sustainability – Trends, Challenges and Opportunities” at the Ninth Annual Oil & Colour Chemists Association (OCCA) Seminar in Manchester, UK. The presentation by Houshang Kheradmand, European Technology Awareness and Innovation Manager for DCM, co-authored by Andrew Trapani, European Technical Director for DCM, focused on identifying sustainability trends and opportunities in the global coatings industry, as well as methodologies for integrating sustainable development criteria across the lifecycle of a product. The presentation was an indepth follow up to the sustainability overview delivered by Kheradmand last year.

 

The paper illustrated how a cross-disciplinary approach to sustainable development involves functions across an entire organization. Kheradmand used examples from Dow Coating Materials to demonstrate how enabling technologies allow paint formulators to create innovative products that combine high performance with increasingly optimized eco-designs.

 

“Last year’s presentation was a more broad-based overview of how globalization, economics, population and ecological conditions affect all facets of the international coatings industry,” said Kheradmand. “This year, we will share practical examples of how we use key metrics to quantify the overall eco-impact, carbon footprint and volatile organic compound emissions of a product, as well as reductions in energy and raw-material consumption.”