Environmental Performance

We are committed to driving sustainability throughout our operations, particularly when it comes to resource efficiency.

We are working to embed sustainable thinking into everything we do – to make sustainability "always considered, always ambitious". Examples of our energy saving and resource efficiency initiatives include: installing sensor operated LED lighting systems, rainwater harvesting systems in our plants and a process that turns waste from paint manufacture into secondary products. The figures shown for our waste, water and carbon intensity are for all AkzoNobel Decorative Paints UK operations and have been verified by the Carbon Trust – an independent and trusted authority. In addition the figures shown for waste are set against an overall target to virtually reduce all hazardous and non-hazardous waste by 2020.

Resource use

Resource efficiency is at the heart of our sustainability strategy and our commitment to doing more with less. We are committed to improving the sustainability of our product portfolio and use lifecycle thinking to lower the environmental impact of our products. We use recycled content in our core packaging whilst ensuring that it remains recyclable at end of life. Our Diamond range offers increased durability, this extends the maintenance cycles and lowers the overall impact of decorating. We are seeking to use renewable raw materials as alternative sources of supply to petrochemicals and in 2018, 5% of organic raw materials used by AkzoNobel were from renewable sources. In the UK we are trialling the use of non-virgin raw materials in some of our specialist products.

End of life

We recognise that leftover paint at the end of a job presents a major challenge and cost to the paint industry. We are committed to offering innovative solutions to this problem so that useable paint does not go to waste. One solution is paint reuse schemes such as Community RePaint, last year alone they redistributed over 315,000 litres of leftover paint brightening the lives of over 290,000 people. We haven't forgotten about empty paint cans, our Dulux Decorator Centres and other trade merchants offer a practical and sustainable recycling options for both metal and plastic empty paint cans.

Transport impacts

Even when our paint leaves our sites, we are still determined to minimise its impact. We have identified that the consumption of diesel is the most significant impact for our transport operations. The impacts of transport are mitigated by: employing double deck trailers to increase our haulage capacity; minimising travel by scheduling same day deliveries to adjacent locations and ensuring that new vehicles have the most up to date Euro VI engines. We also ensure that our haulage contractor optimise delivery routes to minimize fuel consumption and provide their drivers with regular training on fuel efficient driving techniques and monitor their performance