The Sustainability Index for Homebuilders & Homeowners - The Referendum on Paint- Part 1

By: Tony Margani of EVOpaint™

What happens when you introduce a new standard?  Interested parties must reassess what they’re currently doing, compare methods and models and finally, determine to stay the course and risk being left behind or resolve to stay current and realize the benefits. We follow this, almost reactionary process because now what we consider best practices may no longer be pertinent. This is the behavioural connection at which developers, builders, homeowners and retailers are crafting our sustainable built environment.

Over the next month I will be your paint expert focusing in on consumption profiles as it affects the sustainability index of homebuilders and homeowners. We will delve into paint topics that do not come from the industry’s customary marketing perspective (reviewing the hottest colour and how it makes you feel) but from a position of tangible, unprecedented and real sustainable technology developed right here in the GTA that is changing the way the world thinks about paint and painting.

This week let’s start with an introduction to the landscape. What do I define the sustainability index to be?

Anybody keeping current on business news knows that since 2008, Wal-Mart the world’s largest retailer has publicly committed to develop and implement what they call a ‘Live Better Scorecard’. What this means is that Wal-Mart will eventually champion the life-cycle of each product they sell towards zero waste and ensure that the suppliers of these items will be held to the utmost ‘green’ standard as measured by The Sustainability Consortium, a group that is funded in part by Wal-Mart. This will then allow the consumer instant access to data at point of purchase on how well a particular item performs.

Definition: an incentivized balance in economy and environment with the key ability to quantify the ‘green’ aspects of a product.

By this, the paint consumer’s choice to be eco-friendly will now be empowered through a total ownership of the moment and it will be profitable by way of the manufacturer transferring the eco-burden into his purview, quantifying the ‘green’ and tying it to the economic incentive that drives the purchasing process. Because consumers don’t want to and shouldn’t pay more for eco-friendly benefits, sustainable paint products must completely adapt to consumer habits. This tiny little expression of self-interest by all parties involved: the supplier, retailer and consumer is what will recalibrate the consumption patterns of our world’s resources and will come to characterize the sustainability index for the paint industry and the markets it serves. When all parties benefit then true sustainable development will sky rocket, it is the way of the future. Draw the comparison to the disruptive technology that car maker Tesla has catapulted over one of the most established industries by producing no compromise performance vehicles that don’t have to look like a Prius. The eco-friendliness is built into the product and the company. The product is critically acclaimed and considered superior to all of the comparably priced combustion engine counterparts.  It saves people an unprecedented amount of time and money, doesn’t support an energy waste system and creates a new standard. I propose this kind of shift for paint. It might not be as sexy but it’s as enticing as paint is going to get.

We don’t think about paint except when we’re faced with the chore of having to apply it or hiring a contractor to temporarily move into our home. We might as well take a sharpie and swipe a weekend or week out of the calendar of our lives. But this business has been quietly coating our walls year after year without a peep of innovation since the introduction of water based paints in the 1950’s. And let’s face it, paint isn’t popular in the light of industries such as consumer electronics and electric cars and yet I bet you can’t think of any place that isn’t painted in one way or another. It is a sleeping giant of an industry, notorious for its stealth even among big business circles. But through our desire to decorate, (painting is still the most cost effective way to renovate, especially in a struggling economy) the need to protect and maintain newly built and older surfaces and  the capacity to service a broad range of market sectors has made the global coatings conglomerates exceedingly wealthy. Among the most supportive markets to a paint company is new construction particularly residential communities in both high and low rise.

Purchasers today choose communities and lifestyles that raise their profile by maximizing efficiencies and reducing waste. They know it’s smart and profitable to be at the forefront of introducing effective technology that improves deficiencies and standards and the developers/builders operating under these commitments speak well for quality and long-term value. This helps potential homeowners favour development projects that meet their economic and environmental objectives.

This is a pretty smooth transition for builders when implementing more well-known but costly ‘green’ technologies in efficient lighting, HVAC or new window systems but unfortunately when it comes to paint every builder is unknowingly part of an annual North American waste system that is quietly generating upwards of 1 billion litres of finished product that is never used. This doesn’t even take into consideration all the wastes produced from the starting point of raw material extraction and transportation, through manufacturing wastes in water, energy and packaging. And even with today’s best ‘green’ methods in trying to manage the flow of consumer paint waste we don’t find a reprieve because our efforts are costly, reactionary and cyclical; after all, recycling systems depend on waste creation to be successful. Coupled with inconsistent recovery and recapture figures and time and money to deliver paint wastes the underlying notion of improper disposal into our community’s water continues to prevail. We need to stem habitual waste at the source, which means we need to prevent it.

It may be so that big paint companies have lost touch with the concept, but there has always been a reason why, in the popular environmental adage of our youth ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ the first ‘R’ is reduce and the last is recycle. Properly innovated paint products must cut material and labour costs to their absolute minimum simultaneously preventing waste but maintain a controlled consumption that yields equivalent results without compromise. This allows for a transparent and responsive stewardship for paint use in the construction phase and continuously through the maintenance/remodelling lifespan because the most environmentally friendly paint must always be the one you consume the least of.

With that in mind let me propose something radically fundamental in its cause and its effect or you could say its economy and its environment or even its profitability and its incentive:

A true, sustainable and quantifiable, one-coat paint that never requires a primer or second coat but a single application to achieve a finished result over any surface. This delivers material and labour cost savings of 66% to the builder and consumer and prevents 66% raw material extraction, energy, transport, production and post-consumer wastes, rewarding users beyond their money and time savings with an effortless, tangible, built in eco-incentive.

If we are to break the movement that carries a casual obligation to paint sustainability through the construction and maintenance of our communities, homebuilders and homeowners must lead the market, stay current and realize the benefits that come from using new technology. By reassessing what they’re currently doing, comparing methods and models there will be an understanding and then a choice towards self-interest and profitability and a movement away from wasteful outdated standards that dictate how we must consume paint. Painting will be about incentive and quantifying tangible benefits that align with the economic and environmental objectives of today’s paint user. This is where consumer loyalties are moving and so this is where the sustainability index for paint must exist.

I applaud Wal-Mart leadership in realizing that a push from them directs people in the right path for a more healthy shopping experience but according to Wal-Mart global sustainable initiatives, paint is slotted among the very last of the products they sell to be integrated into how they think we should ‘live better’. But let’s not blame them completely, their suppliers after all, no matter how well guided by The Sustainability Consortium or how well they market their paint products, aren’t meeting the new and arguably last standard for paint as I have proposed.

The lethargic attitude of the paint industry can no longer ignore the sustainability index that homebuilders and homeowners desperately need. Let’s invigorate the way in which we perceive paint with a real shift in technology, which means more now than ever in an economy that is still building upon its new foundations since the collapse from its established system and outdated standards.

 

The opinions and statements expressed above are not those of New Home Buyers Network Inc.