Green Coatings To Benefit With Focus On Green Building Practices

Gunjan thakurSeptember 15, 2022

Green coatings are environmentally friendly coatings used in various applications, including OEM, industrial manufacturing, aerospace, automobile, and construction. By lowering the sun’s harmful infrared and UV rays, green coatings help the equipment operate more efficiently overall. This is done by preventing radiant heat transfer inside a building, which keeps the building cool. This reduces the demand for cooling equipment and the additional expenses of fossil fuels they incur.

What Are Green Coatings?

Unlike their traditional chemical counterparts, typically used in industrial applications, green coatings do not release toxic chemicals into the environment. Chemical coatings are formed of volatile organic compounds (VOC), which release poisons into the air at room temperature, posing several risks to the environment and human health. The common health effects of using VOC coatings include headaches, lightheadedness, and may even result in kidney damage. It also has a disadvantageous effect on the ozone layer, which causes ozone layer depletion and global warming. Furthermore, chemical coatings with harmful fungicides and biocides are added to extend their shelf life and stop mildew growth. The fungicides and biocides further increase the negative impacts on the air and ecosystem.

Environmentally friendly components such as vegetable oil,  milk, soybean, castor oil, and clay are used to make green coatings. Vegetable oil prevents corrosion, making it extremely useful in applications exposed to harsh weather, high temperatures, acids, and highly reactive compounds. Castor oil-based green coatings also demonstrate excellent resistance to even the harshest chemicals and acids, making them appropriate for use in the water and wastewater industries and the oil and gas sector. The ongoing movement to reduce volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in decorative paint increased the demand for green coatings. The necessity for green coatings is fueled by VOC rules, which are undergoing continuous worldwide and regional change, and voluntary green building initiatives. Professionals who wish to adhere to green construction initiatives and DIYers who want to decrease their exposure to toxins both place a strong demand on green coating materials. Most paint and coatings manufacturers now provide green coating choices.

How Does Green Architecture Enable Green Coating Applications?

Green architecture and sustainable business practices are now given more weight in companies worldwide due to the ongoing climate change, population growth, and depletion of our natural resources. On the other hand, green design is more about respecting our finite natural resources than adhering to a fashion trend. As building and construction rules continue to change and incorporate higher criteria for environmentally friendly methods, the architectural painting business is not an exception to this trend.

Manufacturers are putting forth more effort than ever to create high-performance coatings with less negative environmental impact. To achieve this, coating developers developed cutting-edge production processes that safeguard air and water purity while lowering the needless use of natural resources. The green agenda of some businesses, in particular, focuses on showing that all of these goals can be achieved affordably while also eradicating the use of hazardous substances, promoting biorenewables, lowering VOC emissions, incorporating recycled materials, reducing energy consumption, and reducing waste.

Consumers and manufacturers today generally want the coatings business to be more environmentally friendly and sustainable. Sustainable coatings—items created with a focus on minimizing or avoiding harmful components or processes or rendering the substrate on which they are applied more sustainable—have become more popular due to this shared intention.

A new breed of performance-rich interior products with high-end aesthetics and even longer-lasting durability has recently entered the market thanks to technological advancements in environmentally friendly coatings. These products are also simple to apply and offer a new level of performance. Some paints with environmental consideration also have antimicrobial qualities that help them stay clean longer by resisting mildew and other microbes. These coatings are ideal for high-traffic locations and facility conditions because they repel stains better than ceramic coatings currently on the market, resist burnish marks, and endure repeated washings and obvious paint wear. As VOC laws and consumer demand drive the industry, low VOC coatings are continually refined and improved, and we may anticipate seeing products with even higher durability and ease-of-application features.

How Are Businesses Responding To Green Coating Products?

Many businesses are setting sustainability objectives for themselves and integrating environmental activities into their company practices in addition to the changes brought about by the tightening legislation. By using renewable raw materials like soy and sunflower oil in paint preparations, enhancing packaging design with recyclable materials, and outfitting delivery trucks with biodiesel fuel, for instance, leading paint manufacturers are taking significant steps to reduce waste and upgrade energy systems in their facilities.

Coatings firms must concentrate on developing products that meet environmental rules and their clients’ performance requirements as environmental restrictions continue to change. The various requirements require that paint and coatings products be created to adhere to the strictest VOC laws currently in effect because VOC regulations are always changing. Additionally, VOC standards are not set in stone but frequently vary throughout the year. This implies that when compliance regulations alter and tighten, specific paint types will begin to vanish from store shelves, necessitating the adoption of new paint requirements.

The Trends

Customers are pickier when it comes to a wide range of coatings. However, consumers continue to make decisions based mostly on price rather than safety, which makes it simple for many different types of coatings from manufacturers with a poor reputation to enter the market. The lead in these coatings, which is exceedingly harmful to human health and the environment, may be inhaled by users. In reality, the market’s leading coatings brands are focused on production technologies to help assure consumer health and help reduce pollution. Recently, the idea of “green coatings” for the interior started to emerge with the idea of “green building” in the construction industry.

Currently, more and more projects and requirements are multinational, with specifications being developed globally and materials and labor being obtained worldwide. China’s standards differ greatly from those used in the US or the EU. Some nations have no requirements at all, while others adopt current standards but modify certain parts of the legislation, and some local governments within these nations ban the use of certain coatings. Controlling volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are released from the coating during the application, is the most popular way to limit the usage of coatings. The process of determining this value for each coating differs significantly between nations and might also be conceptual or actual values, both of which generally vary significantly. Even though a coating has a low VOC content, it can still be dangerous for the environment or personnel. An otherwise green coating can become tainted by several other things. These include heavy metals, prohibited substances, ozone-depleting substances, HAPs, and exempt solvents.