Working Together to Drive Sustainable Development
Coatings Trends and Technologies (CTT) just wrapped up, and it was another successful event. My favorite part was moderating our panel discussion on sustainability on the second day. Our panelists included Laureen Blissard, Principal of LTLB Envirotecture, Technical Director of the GreenBuilder® Coalition, and USGBC LEED Faculty Member; John Griffin, Business Director and Regional Director for North America, AkzoNobel Aerospace; Aaron Lockhart, Head of Industrial Coatings, North America, Covestro; Mark Nichols, Ph.D., Technical Leader, Paint Research, Ford Motor Company; and Gary Spilman, Ph.D., Research Fellow, Resinate Materials Group, Inc.
We covered a lot of ground in one short hour and addressed the following four topics:
- What would a 100% sustainable coatings industry look like?
- What are the obstacles preventing us from reaching our sustainability goals?
- How do we collaborate and work together to drive sustainable development and overcome these hurdles?
- How do we see the industry transforming in the future?
It was great to hear the comments and ideas of coatings industry professionals from along the value chain, and from both architectural and industrial perspectives. We covered cost, performance, energy use, bio-based materials, transfer efficiency, waste, recycling, specifications, certifications, regulations, collaboration, and more … and could have easily kept the discussion going for much longer.
I would like to thank our panelists for their participation, and for taking the time to travel to CTT and share their thoughts, ideas and experiences with our audience. And thanks to Covestro for sponsoring the live broadcast of the discussion. If you would like to watch the sustainability panel discussion, or any of the three other CTT sessions that were broadcast, register for Webinar Sessions under the Register tab at www.pcimag.com/coatings-conference.