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.

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 waste management programs are focused on reducing 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. Our primary waste streams consist of packaging waste, residual paint waste, sludges from wastewater treatments, powder fines and general household waste, such as waste from canteens and offices.

We continue to work on reducing our waste streams through numerous reduction initiatives. This includes improving the efficiency of our solvent recovery units, which helps to increase the amount of recovered and reused solvents that would otherwise be disposed of as waste. In addition, we’ve increased our efforts to transfer more unintended outflow from our manufacturing process to by-products reused by third parties. Another example of our reduction efforts is our material optimization process, which is focused on diverting slow-moving and obsolete materials (SLOBs) from scrapping to internal reuse or resale via our third-party outlet partners.

An example of how we’re reusing industrial residue as a more sustainable raw material for making paint in our own operations can be seen at our Mauá plant in São Paulo, Brazil. We’re using 30% of the total treated residue (waste formed after the treatment of industrial wastewater) to formulate our Coral Pina Piso line of paint. Following the quality control process, any residue not suitable for use in the product is transformed into briquettes for energy recovery. In addition to the reuse of the residue, this approach also means that 100% of the treated water can be reused in products and processes. 

Resource inflows

Using more sustainable packaging

One of our goals in becoming more circular is to use at least 50% recycled content in the plastic packaging used by our Decorative Paints business in Europe by 2025, which represents more than half of our plastic packaging purchased. We continue to collaborate with suppliers to ensure we stay on track to meet our target. If a supplier is unable to provide PCR content in line with our target, we actively look for alternative suppliers to help work towards our sustainability goal. In 2024, the range of PCR in our packs was 25%-90%, and the percentage PCR in all our Paints Europe packaging was 43% on average.  We're on track to meet our 2025 target.

Other initiatives

In addition to our target of increasing the PCR in the plastic packaging used by Decorative Paints Europe, we’re also running a number of other initiatives to increase the circularity of our products and packaging. For example, our Dulux Decorator Centre network in the UK has already recycled more than a million paint cans and is aiming to triple that number by the end of 2025. The free-of-charge recycling scheme, run in partnership with Veolia, makes it easy for tradespeople to dispose of empty Dulux Trade paint cans – helping to reduce the impact on the planet.

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.

Given that we’re transitioning to CSRD implementation, we haven’t yet set a specific target for increasing the durability in our portfolio. In 2024, 15.5% of Paints and 11.8% of Coatings revenue was considered to provide more durability versus the mainstream product 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.