Brazil Adopts Sustainability Reporting Requirement

Sustainability reporting has become a “voluntary” practice in Brazil this year, but will become a mandatory requirement for companies operating in the country as of January 2026. Under President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, who has vowed to make environmental protection a hallmark of his administration, Brazil has adopted sustainability disclosure standards set by the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB).

“We continue to hear strong support for the ISSB’s Standards from regulators globally and I commend the Brazilian Ministry of Finance and Comissão de Valores Mobiliários for providing clarity to companies and investors in Brazil by setting out a clear roadmap towards mandatory adoption,” said ISSB chairman Emmanuel Faber, during a meeting of the IFRS Foundation in Panama, in October 2023.

The IFRS Foundation is a not-for-profit responsible for developing global accounting and sustainability disclosure standards, known as IFRS Standards. The new Brazilian standards requirements were announced by the Ministério da Fazenda, the Brazilian Ministry of Finance, and by the Comissão de Valores Mobiliários (CVM), the Securities and Exchange Commission of Brazil.

Major Paint and Coatings Manufacturers are Already Engaged

Among the major paint and coatings manufacturers active in Brazil, many already have clear sustainability programs in place, supporting environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting.

Sherwin-Williams, for example, reports on Brazilian ESG activities as part of the company’s annual global sustainability report.

“Sustainability is rooted in our values and our way of doing business. We take a holistic approach, integrating sustainability into our business operations around the world and embedding it into our product innovation and delivery processes.

“Globally, we have the commitment, strategy, goals and programs in place to drive progress in our key focus areas: Climate and Carbon, Product Stewardship, Cycle Assessment Occupational Life, Health and Safety and Talent Acquisition and Employee Engagement,” the company’s latest Brazil ESG report noted.

Among S-W Brazil’s specific goals in this endeavor include the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 30%, increasing the share of renewable energy to 50% of total electricity use, increasing operational energy efficiency by 20%, and reducing waste disposal intensity by 25%.

Beyond these goals, S-W Brazil also is cooperating with the Prolata program, which aims to recycle paint cans, including reuse, proper disposal and statistical tracking of the effort.

The national paint and coatings trade association, Abrafati, the Associação Brasileira dos Fabricantes de Tintas, supports the Prolata program. Prolata also makes up part of the national waste reduction program, the Política Nacional de Resíduos Sólidos.

“In the last five years, the Prolata Program carried out the environmentally appropriate disposal of more than 31 thousand tons of post-consumer steel packaging, avoiding the emission of almost 118 thousand tons of greenhouse gases (CO2) in the manufacture of new steel,” the group states. Prolata is active in the five regions of the country, present in 12 states plus the Federal District of Brasilia, totaling operations in 36 municipalities.

Embracing Social Well-Being within ESG

PPG, too, has a well-established global sustainability program, including activities in Brazil. Among recent accomplishments there, grouping shipments into a smaller number of larger trucks has reduced the cost and carbon emissions associated with transportation. 

“This initiative, which has been taken up in many of our other businesses and geographies, helped avoid the release of the equivalent of 156 metric tons of CO2 from our automotive business in Brazil,” notes PPG’s latest ESG report.

In the area of social support, PPG also is developing a program to increase diversity in education in the STEM areas of study, including science, technology, engineering and math.

“In support of our mission to inspire more women to work in STEM-related fields, we worked with nonprofit Casa Hacker to launch a new program in Sumaré, Brazil called Girls in Tech. This program offers high school girls an opportunity to participate in after-school classes on a range of technology-related subjects, including computer programming, robotics and 3D printing,” the ESG report said.

Another STEM initiative by PPG includes mentoring. “In Brazil, more than 70 employees volunteered with long-standing partner Junior Achievement to help prepare 1,400 students for the workforce by sharing insights on STEM career paths and workplace ethics,” PPG’s report states.

Bringing Color to Older Neighborhoods

AkzoNobel is another major paint and coatings manufacturer with a long-standing ESG program. One standout element of its Brazil activities is its Tudo de Cor movement.

“Th[is] sustainable socio-cultural movement that puts into practice Coral’s mission of bringing color to people’s lives, through volunteer actions to color and restore thousands of cultural heritage sites, communities and entities throughout Brazil, fostering creativity, imagination, a sense of community and citizenship, ultimately encouraging individual and collective self-esteem, in addition to promoting socialization and appropriation of places by the community,” explained the company’s latest
ESG report.

“With the first can of paint opened in 2009, in the Bixiga neighborhood, in São Paulo, Tudo de Cor celebrate[d] 10 years in 2019 with more than 1,800 projects delivered, 10,000 properties renovated, 4,600 painters trained and more than 950,000 liters of paint used, mobilizing, in total, 45,000 volunteers,” the AkzoNobel report noted.

“One of the highlighted projects is Mais Vida nos Morros, the result of the union between Coral (an AkzoNobel brand) and Recife City Hall, which used more than 20,000 liters of paint to color several communities, such as Sítio São Brás, Beberibe, Vasco da Gama and Alto from Burity. Its residents were able to actively participate in the painting of their houses, squares and streets, in addition to having a renewed, harmonized and humanized environment,” the report said.

Abrafati Provides National Leadership

Paint and coatings manufacturers in Brazil will have ample inspiration to take up, if not further advance their sustainability efforts, thanks to the leadership of the national association Abrafati.

“Started in 2021, the Abrafati Sectoral Sustainability Program (PSS) is a pioneering initiative in the paint industry, with the aim of guiding and boosting the continuous improvement process of companies, in addition to constituting an important tool for sectoral transparency in matters of Corporate Governance and Leadership, Human Capital, Social Capital and Environment,” the association noted.

Developed together with the Akatu Institute, the program was the result of a deep dive into the analysis of what it takes to build solid ESG foundations.  

“The PSS encompasses several actions – including the program to comply with the National Solid Waste Policy – and one of its central points is the Sustainability Assessment System, which involves 44 indicators, distributed across 17 sub-themes and four themes, all related to the 12 U.N. Sustainable Development Goals most relevant to the paint sector in Brazil,” Abrafati noted.

Evaluation cycles are annual, with voluntary and self-declarative participation by paint manufacturers. The first two evaluation cycles, in 2022 and 2023, included a self-assessment questionnaire on the Abrafati Sustainability Assessment System online platform. “As part of the sector’s commitment to transparency, Abrafati annually discloses the sector’s average performance, which in these first two years was at the Intermediate level. Completing the system expands the understanding of sustainability topics and practices and allows a clear visualization of opportunities for improvements in relation to what actually occurs in the sector,” the association concludes.