Reviewing some recent developments that have emerged in EU chemical legislation, some key matters appear to be advancing and some look as if they might be relaxed. These will be quite significant developments for the paint and coatings industry and are outlined below.

Second Stage on Product Ecodesign

The European Council (EC) and the European Parliament have reached alignment and are reportedly close to adopting their official positions on the Regulation for Ecodesign of Sustainable Products, which will repeal the previous 2009 Ecodesign Directive. The new one will be more attuned to modern purchasing trends insofar as considering the nature of consumers buying online, rising consumer awareness of sustainability and will place a much greater emphasis on the circular economy.

The new framework regulation will be applicable to a much broader gamut of products than what has previously been included, so that almost all goods sold in EU markets are subject to scrutiny of sustainability requirements across their life-cycles. (Food, feed, medicine, veterinary products and motor vehicles are excluded.)

The greater sweep of this approach is in stark contrast to previous legislative targets where only energy- or raw material-intensive products were considered. What is expected now is that sustainability requirements will be enacted through delegated acts for certain product groups. These priority groups will include paints, chemicals, iron, steel, aluminium, furniture, textiles and ICT (information and communication technologies) equipment.

As part of the aim to make things easier for the consumer and to reduce waste, the regulation is aimed at ensuring the consumer goods are energy and resource-efficient in terms of manufacture, but that they are durable, reliable, reusable, upgradable, repairable, recyclable and easier to maintain in terms of design. Furthermore, although this is unlikely to affect the coatings sector, the regulation will seek to ban the destruction of unsold goods (chiefly footwear, clothes, electrical and electronic equipment) from 12 months after the regulation becomes effective.

This is the legislation that also proposes the digital product passport for consumer goods so that they may be circulated throughout the single market. The passport will have to provide data on safety and sustainability, details necessary for importation and exportation and allow traceability throughout the value chain. The ambition is to have the digital product passport concept in place by the end of 2024.

Since this is framework legislation, the greater challenges will lie ahead when the EC starts adopting the delegated acts that set out the sustainability requirements for those specific product groups. Currently there’s a very good chance that the draft regulation will be agreed between the EC and the European parliament before the end of this year.

Second Thoughts Balancing Banning with ‘Essential’ Use

Given how the environment has more prominence in the EU’s consciousness since its Green Deal announcement, and with its much stronger emphasis on finding replacement chemicals, there have been some questions around how much energy and effort needs to be invested into finding and developing replacements, which eventually turns into an industry and environmental balancing act. On the future hand there are the eventual possible successes, but on the present hand there are the essential chemicals products that are currently effective in what they do.

This aspect of certain chemicals being essential is believed to be prompting second thoughts on the EU’s REACh legislation, which had sought to eliminate the most potentially harmful chemicals from the European chemical supply chain.

The gist of the argument largely boils down to how ‘essential’ is defined and whether it forms some sort of lynchpin in supplying goods for a certain function on the part of society, or whether it is essential because there are no alternatives available. These developments are to be viewed in the context of the EU re-examining its REACh legislation last year, 15 years after it originally took effect.

Coatings Firms Advance Their Environmental Agendas

New industry announcements from within the European coatings sector have placed recyclability and sustainability right at the heart of present and future coatings design, which is clearly at the heart of the EU’s ambitions for the region.

Very recently AkzoNobel announced that it has developed a bio-based coating that is formulated with two bio-based rosins – one is a rapeseed rosin, the other is pine rosin. It has already agreed to supply this new bio-based automotive interior coating to the South Korean car manufacturer KIA, in response to its demand for an interior bio-based coating. Supplied as part of a wider coatings portfolio agreement with KIA, AkzoNobel stated that the new formulation fulfils all of the physical and chemical resistance requirements (to heat, scratch, sun cream and air freshener) that were specified by KIA.

Meanwhile in the coil coatings sector, Beckers Group has announced that it is collaborating on the recycling of plastic into phthalic anhydride, envisioning its long-term use in coil coating formulations. 

Phthalic anhydride is significant in polyester resin synthesis and constitutes not far off 50% of the resin structures in which it is present. It is anticipated that the recycled resin would form a drop-in substitute. 

Beckers is collaborating with two other parties on this endeavour: BioBTX and Symeres. The ambition is to create a supply chain for sustainable aromatic monomers made from plastic waste.

BioBTX already has a method in place for converting waste plastic into BTX (benzene, toluene and xylene), which is effectively the start of the circle. Thereafter, Symeres oxidizes the xylenes into aromatic phthalic monomers for Beckers to convert into phthalic anhydride.

The pilot involves processing mixed plastic waste into sustainable chemical building blocks and finally high-value products, using multiple advanced sustainable chemical conversions. This includes the unique Integrated Cascading Catalytic Pyrolysis (ICCP) technology. Beckers is particularly interested in xylenes, which can be oxidized to produce monomers, such as phthalic anhydride, for use in polyester resins for coatings.

The pilot is still in development but is expected to have significant sustainability benefits. Besides upcycling thousands of tons of waste plastic into high-value products, early estimates suggest that the process has the potential to reduce white coating carbon emissions by at least 10%.

“Nobody has ever created a coil coating containing phthalic anhydride made from plastic waste, so this world first is an important step forward in terms of producing more sustainable resins and paints,” said Julien Marquiant, resin lab manager at Beckers. “It really is a game-changer for us and our ability to incorporate high-quality materials made from plastic waste.”