Paint the town green

Leading manufacturer to transform environmental profile of paint ICI, the company that makes Dulux, is preparing to delve into the mysterious afterlife of paint. We buy 414 million litres of the stuff in the UK each year, and ICI wants to know what happens to it after we’ve put it on the wall - when buildings are refurbished or demolished. The purpose of the investigation, which is being undertaken with sustainability charity The Natural Step (TNS), is to come up with ways of keeping waste paint out of the waste stream. The industry has been experimenting for a long while with ‘front end’ solutions to paint’s environmental impact, such as making water-based paint products. But this study, with funding from the Department of Trade and Industry’s Zero Emission Enterprise scheme, is the first to identify and tackle the problem of the product’s ‘end of life’. The researchers behind the project believe that huge amounts of construction materials are thrown away every year simply because they are covered in paint. “Once you paint a brick or piece of wood, recycling becomes that much harder; the next user might not want it white. That’s the issue we’re trying to address,” says Phil Taylor, research associate at ICI. “This is a classic example of a product that is a barrier to a zero-emission enterprise,” explains TNS’s Peter Price-Thomas. TNS will first undertake a lifecycle analysis of Dulux paint, to identify exactly which parts of the paint process - from the raw materials and manufacturing through to eventual disposal - are most problematic. If the paint could be maufactured differently, so that it were much easier to remove from surfaces, and easier to recycle, explains Price-Thomas, it could be transformed from a barrier to green practice into an “enabler”. It could actually reduce the amount of construction waste going to landfill. The project is also a model example of an environmental issue being tackled right down the supply chain, says Price-Thomas. The initial impetus for ICI’s investigations came from construction company Carillion, which was spurred by the pressure for more sustainable buildings - coming from public body contractors such as primary care trusts and local education authorities. Now, as well as Carillion, the project involves ICI’s suppliers too. - Hannah Bullock ICI, Phil Taylor, phil_taylor@ici.com
TNS, Peter Price-Thomas, ppt@naturalstep.org.uk

20 September 2005

Hannah Bullock