Crown Paints has announced its plans for Ecobuild 2010. The company will showcase the positive steps it has taken to improve the environmental credentials of its products and business practices since implementing its earthbalance® programme, a company-wide sustainability initiative.

Designed to take a holistic and coherent approach to sustainability, earthbalance® considers the full product lifecycle in the context of three key areas: resources, climate and people. At the show, Crown Paints will be outlining the latest earthbalance® developments, and how these are helping the company to operate in a way that is more environmentally, socially and economically responsible.
Mark Lloyd, Sustainability Manager at Crown Paints, comments: “Since becoming a standalone company, sustainability has been high on Crown Paints’ agenda and, as such, we have made some significant advancements. We have dramatically reduced the environmental impact of our products and everyday business practices. From implementing measures to make the production of our products more energy efficient to reducing packaging and recycling everyday office waste – the earthbalance® programme has been fully embraced by all people working within our company.”

In line with the wider governmental objective to reduce UK greenhouse gas emissions to the year 2050 by 80 percent, Crown Paints has worked with key environmental agencies, including the Carbon Trust, to develop a PAS2050 guidance standard to assess and reduce the carbon footprint of its products. As a result, the company has successfully reduced energy consumption at many of its manufacturing sites by re-engineering lighting and heating. The company has also worked with Best Foot Forward to identify more efficient packaging solutions, and as a result, Crown Paints’ metal cans are now manufactured from 56 percent recycled steel.

More recently, Crown Paints has established an innovative ‘can-back’ pilot scheme for the recycling of plastic paint containers. Collected at selected Crown Decorating Centres, the containers have been fed back into the supply chain for the production of new plastic products such as park benches. As part of this scheme, Crown Paints has donated some of the benches, made from the recycled paint containers, to a number of sites across the UK. The benches have been donated in recognition of the company’s partnerships with local authorities and housing associations in developing planned maintenance programmes for their housing stock.