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“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” (Oscar Wilde)

The concept of sustainability is a broad one and is open to wide interpretation. It is often the case that one can get locked into a particular area of endeavour and miss the bigger picture.

At the end of 2012, this sustainability blog was full of encouragement and optimism about the progress that the coatings industry would make in the following year.

In past blogs, sustainable development in the coatings industry has been linked closely with innovation.

Doing things right or doing the right thing? That’s a question I have heard raised in the context of sustainability as people have sought to identify what exactly is the right path to make our world a truly better and more sustainable place for us and future generations.

I can still recall the smell of solvent-based gloss paint as it dried after application at home.

New sustainable developments that come from ‘left field’

I don’t want to sound alarmist, but I was deeply disturbed by the recent pronouncements from the IPCC. This learned international organisation concluded that the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has grown to levels not seen for 3 million years, and that about half of cumulative anthropogenic CO2 emissions between 1750 and 2010 have occurred in the last 40 years.

At the recent ACS show in Atlanta, attendees were asked to identify which supplier industry would be expected to deliver the most significant innovation step over the next three years. In declining order of popularity, attendees predicted developments in the fields of binders, production technology, additives and pigments.

Strong on technical advances but short on commercial traction. Energy supplies and efficiency are not the whole story!