Rohm and Haas, which helped sponsor the conference, also presented “Innovation and Management Methodology for a Sustainable Paint and Coatings Market.” The paper was presented by Dr. Andrew Trapani, Technical Leader of the Rohm and Haas Laboratories in Valbonne, France, and Dr. Houshang Kheradmand, Manager for Product Stewardship and Sustainable Development at that site. Rohm and Haas is the leading, global supplier of binders and additives for paint and coatings companies around the globe. Rohm and Haas also is widely acknowledged as the company that brought water-based acrylic chemistry to the market. For more than 50 years, the company has been using this more environmentally advanced chemistry to invent high-quality products that replace less desirable, solvent-based materials. Rohm and Haas's water-based chemistry is used in a myriad of industries across the globe. In 2007 and again in 2008, nearly half of the company’s $300 million R&D budget has been devoted to sustainability efforts.

The presentation focused on methodologies for coatings products which integrate sustainable development criteria across the product life cycle, from conception through to recycling and waste management phase. The resulting metrics allow a quantification of an individual product’s overall eco-impact or carbon footprint, encompassing six key aspects: VOC emissions, energy reduction, raw material reduction, renewable raw material utilisation, toxicity and cost.

Dr. Kheradmand: “The sustainable development approach is a holistic, cross-disciplinary approach, necessarily involving functions across the organisation. It covers the whole supply chain, and allows for the mapping of the carbon footprint of individual products, as well as for the identification of financial, operational and carbon-saving opportunities.”

Rohm and Haas shared examples of its technologies that allow paint formulators to create innovative products that combine high performance with an optimised eco-design:
Ropaque™ is an example of Rohm and Haas technology that has a measurable environmental impact - a typical reformulation of consumer paints with Ropaque™ technology opacifying polymer results in up to 8% lower emission of gaseous pollutants components;
The company’s latest pure acrylic binder technology, Avanse™, enables up to a 10% decrease in CO2 emissions in a typical water-borne interior wall paint formulation while also saving formulation costs.
Fastrack™, a high performance water-borne binder used to make traffic paints, provides almost 50% less CO2 emissions than existing solvent-based technologies.

The company also highlighted its recently signed partnership with The Natural Step International, one of the world’s leading NGOs devoted to helping companies create systemic, science-based approaches for becoming more sustainable. The Natural Step will assist Rohm and Haas Company in incorporating sustainable objectives in all of its business, research and development, and operating practices.

Dr. Trapani stressed emphasized the company’s long-standing dedication to sustainability: “Rohm and Haas pioneered the concept of eco-sustainable coatings chemistry more than 50 years ago with its development of safer, longer-lasting waterborne paint components." He pointed out that these innovations facilitated the replacement of hazardous and polluting solvent-borne house paints caused a sea-change across the paint industry, with a huge, positive environmental impact. “Our innovations in water-borne acrylic chemistry have prevented countless thousands of tonnes of organic solvents from being emitted into the environment during the past five decades