Sustainability

We’re always finding new and exciting ways to make our products more sustainable and longer lasting. Because paint matters – to us, to you and the world around us.

At AkzoNobel, we’ve made it our business to deliver the sustainable and innovative solutions that our customers, communities – and the planet – are increasingly relying on.

We’re fully focused on ensuring that the pioneering paints and coatings we supply today can help to safeguard our world far beyond tomorrow.

Guided by our company purpose, People. Planet. Paint. – which lies at the heart of everything we do – we’ve identified three key global topics: climate change; circularity; health and well-being; and made a commitment to future generations that we’ll do everything we can to address them.

Collaborating with customers, suppliers, academia and other stakeholders is fundamental to what we want to achieve. It’s about pushing boundaries and finding inventive ways to collectively make a positive contribution to an ever-changing world. This will be vital if we’re to realize our science-based target of halving our carbon emissions by 2030.

Climate change

How we help limit climate change. We focus on halving our carbon emissions in our value chain – by moving to renewable electricity and reducing our overall energy consumption – and developing solutions that help customers reduce overall carbon footprint.

Circularity

How we move towards a circular economy. We’re reducing waste throughout our value chain – increasing the use of renewable and recycled materials and material efficiency – while protecting surfaces and materials, making them last longer.

Health and well-being

How we improve the health and well-being of our employees, customers, end-users and other stakeholders in the communities where we operate. We do this by keeping them safe, healthy and engaged.

Let’s take action on climate change

At AkzoNobel, we’re aware that climate change could affect our operations, our supply chain and our customers. So, in 2017, we committed to becoming a carbon-neutral company by 2050. Now we’re turning this ambition into reality by setting aspirational, science-based targets. As well as aligning with the 1.5°C pathway, this means we’ll increasingly deliver sustainable solutions to our customers.

Our sustainability ambitions

Making buildings greener

The buildings we live and work in can have a big impact on our health and well-being. We supply a wide range of solutions to the construction industry that can help to make cities and communities more sustainable.

Find out how we contribute

How we look after our people

Our focus on People covers many different aspects. It's about ensuring a safe and diverse work environment, developing our talented workforce, embracing our values and our approach to human rights. It also includes the numerous local projects we carry out through our AkzoNobel Cares societal program that bring significant benefits to people and communities around the world.

Learn more

UN Sustainable Development Goals

Our approach to sustainable business is designed to contribute to the global agenda represented by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). All the SDGs inspire our actions and decisions. As a company, we recognize their strategic importance to our business, and to the world – and continue to focus on those SDGs where we can have the biggest impact and integrate them into our sustainability agenda. This agenda is a key driver for business development, innovation and growth. The SDGs will therefore continue to help us take our industry forward and ensure that sustainability remains firmly at the heart of what we do.

Uniting partners to tackle climate change

We launched a 24-hour Collaborative Sustainability Challenge to find collective ways to accelerate carbon reduction in the paints and coatings industry.

Find out more