Circular economy

For AkzoNobel, the circular economy goes beyond recycling. It all starts with limiting the need to recycle. Therefore, we focus on reducing waste from its source, finding alternative sources for our raw materials and repurposing and reclaiming materials. Our efforts extend beyond our own operations, recognizing the importance of engaging the full value chain. We actively collaborate with suppliers and customers, as we believe innovation through partnership is essential if we’re to progress towards our circularity goals. Our Board of Management is responsible for incorporating the sustainability agenda, including circular economy, into the company's strategic approach and monitoring the performance through an annual review. Our Chief Human Resource Officer is responsible for the implementation and execution of our sustainability programs and policies.

Summary

Paints and coatings make a vital contribution to extending the lifespan of substrates, which effectively means that circularity is built into the benefits they offer. Our products can make objects last longer, reducing the need for additional raw materials and resources, while also improving our customers’ productivity and reducing waste. Just think about how long buildings or cars would last, if they weren’t coated
We’ve assessed the circular economy related to 1) Waste management. 2) Our waste streams. 3) Resource inflows. 4) Resource outflows.

Waste management

The objective of our waste management policy is to minimize our waste through prevention, reuse, recycling and recovery. We aim to reduce our waste to landfill as much as possible, with a particular focus on reducing hazardous waste to landfill, through elimination, recycling or incineration.

Our waste streams

Our programs aim to reduce waste directed to disposal, with an emphasis on recycling and reusing waste, while keeping the hierarchy of waste reduction in mind and avoiding landfill where possible.

While overall waste was stable, we continued to make progress on waste streams through a number of reduction initiatives. For example, our Barcelona site successfully eliminated 8% (42 tons) of waterborne operational waste by piloting a treatment process in collaboration with a local university team. At our Mauá site in Brazil, investment in process mechanization enabled reuse of 37% (425 tons) of the total sludge generated as a sustainable raw material, thereby significantly reducing the volume of waste directed to disposal.

Another example is our material optimization process, which aims to divert slow-moving and obsolete materials (SLOBs) from scrapping to internal reuse and selling to preferred third parties. These initiatives involve multi-disciplinary collaboration between our commercial teams, supply chain, manufacturing, HSE&S, innovation teams and third parties.

Resource inflows

Using more sustainable packaging

Our target was to have at least 50% PCR content in plastic packaging used by our Decorative Paints business in Europe by 2025.

In 2025, the percentage of PCR in all our Decorative Paints Europe buckets was, on average, 53% (2024: 43%) which is equivalent to 6,754 tons. We’ve therefore met our 2025 target.

During the year, we continued to collaborate with suppliers to ensure that our target was achieved. If a supplier was unable to provide PCR content in line with our target, we actively looked for alternative suppliers to help us make progress on our sustainability goal.

Other initiatives

In an effort to reduce the waste of our customers, we’re continuously looking for alternatives, across both our Paints and Coatings businesses. For example, we’re trialing bulk packaging to limit the number of cans used, which will subsequently reduce waste. At Decorative Paints UK, we worked with A.C. Beck & Son to trial the use of bulk 170 liter reusable containers for decorating 456 new-build apartments at The Morello Apartments in Croydon. This perfectly illustrates how we can still cater for the needs of our customers, while avoiding the waste that comes from our products.

When it comes to leftover paint, we’ve developed a more sustainable product which contains post-consumer use paint. This helps us to reduce our reliance on virgin raw materials and means there’s less need to find alternative solutions for what would otherwise be considered as waste. To ensure the success of this initiative, we’ve partnered with specialists in the field to collect, evaluate and process post-consumer use paint and transform it into a new product. These products were originally launched in 2019 and are currently available in five European countries. The intention is to further expand by collaborating with waste recycling companies in other European countries.

Resource outflows

Making substrates last longer

Paints and coatings make a vital contribution to extending the lifespan of substrates, which means circularity is built into the benefits they offer. We continuously monitor the evolving landscape of circularity requirements in our downstream markets, driven by customer, societal and legislative trends (e.g. Ecodesign in the EU). This way, we increase durability, innovate and make our products and substrates last longer in our key end markets – transport, consumer goods and the built environment.

We haven’t yet set a specific target for increasing the durability in our portfolio. In 2025, a total of 14.1% (16.5% for Paints and 12.6% for Coatings) of revenue came from products that are considered to be longer-lasting versus the industry average in the market for that category.

For more information on the assessment, as well as extrapolation of our full portfolio, please refer to our latest annual report.

Last update: March 2026