What does a circular economy mean in Construction & Architectural?

Challenge: Supporting a diverse range of end-users to make more circular choices

The Architectural & Construction (A&C) sector spans a wide range of applications, markets, and end-users – each with their own unique needs, and each with varying levels of knowledge regarding sustainability. But most of these users share the desire to help create a more circular economy – whether that’s DIY paint consumers selecting longer-lasting paints, or industrial professionals choosing materials designed to be reused.

For coatings and adhesives manufacturers, the challenge is not only developing solutions that support greater circularity, but also quantifying and communicating these circularity improvements to customers, consumers, and regulatory bodies.

In particular, to offer partly bio-based and mass-balanced materials, coatings and adhesives manufacturers need to be able to quantify the bio-based content and mass-balance accounting. This can create barriers to innovation and customer adoption, particularly since mass-balanced materials can be difficult to trace. Manufacturers also need to demonstrate that more circular products won’t compromise quality.

Status: Driving greater circularity with mass-balanced and partly bio-based materials

We already offer varied solutions to support a more circular economy, with a focus on mass-balanced and partly bio-based materials.

Partly bio-based materials
We offer an increasing number of products made with partly bio-based raw materials – sourced from feedstocks such as plants, algae, or agricultural waste. This supports the transition to a more circular economy by utilizing agricultural streams that are usually unsuitable for food or feed applications, and would otherwise be discarded.

For Architectural applications, we offer our Decovery® family of resins with up to 52% verified bio-based ingredients – including Decovery® SP-8030, SP-8310, SP-8406, SP-2022, and SP-7450.  Many of these solutions deliver comparable  performance to fossil-based equivalents, offering strong outdoor durability, breathability, and protection for both interior and exterior wood surfaces. For instance, Decovery® SP-7450 offers fast drying, fast blocking resistance, good alkaline resistance, and early water resistance for exterior wood – all with 39% C14-certified bio-based content.

For Construction applications, we offer the new range of Pasquick® CQ products. These 2K waterborne solutions for concrete floor coatings offer excellent corrosion protection, cure up to eight times faster than conventional floor-coating systems

Mass-balanced products
The more of your existing infrastructure and assets you’re able to maintain, the easier it is to transition to a more circular economy. That’s why we offer mass-balanced certified solutions for several of our Architectural & Construction products. All these solutions are ISCC PLUS certified, with the mass-balance accounting externally audited, and can directly drop in to your existing production process.

Our mass-balance approach involves introducing alternative raw materials – such as partly bio-based content – early on in your supply chain, and allocating them to selected end-products. In this way, mass-balanced products let you offer more circular solutions to your customers, while complying with the same technical requirements as conventional products.

Next: Partnering to develop the more circular solutions of tomorrow

As we work toward our ambition to become carbon neutral by 2050, we’ll continue to help you create your toolbox of more circular Architectural & Construction solutions. In fact, our innovations will soon be helping to boost circularity even further for both floor and wall paint applications.

We’re also here to help you develop these innovations yourself by sharing our insights on circularity-related topics. We do this through workshops, dialogs, and technical expertise support. And we can support with quantifying the circularity benefits of these materials and communicating them to your customers through technical benchmarking, regulatory support, and more. Together, this will make it easier for you and them to choose the optimal product to achieve your sustainability and circularity targets.