Sustainability

We’re always finding new and exciting ways to make our products more sustainable and longer lasting. Because paint matters – to us, to you and the world around us.

At AkzoNobel, we’re focused on ensuring that the pioneering paints and coatings we supply today can help safeguard our world far beyond tomorrow. We innovate with and for customers and play a progressive and collaborative role in energizing entire industries to advance towards a more sustainable future.

By using the power of paints and coatings – to harness energy, reflect heat, protect surfaces for longer, purify indoor air and reduce drag in ships, for example – we can help customers decrease energy consumption, increase efficiency, lower waste and improve safety, while also being more cost-effective. It’s about finding inventive ways to collectively make a positive contribution to our ever-changing world.

This will be vital if we’re to realize our science-based target of halving our carbon emissions by 2030. It’s one of several ambitions we have for 2030, which also include reaching 50% of revenue from sustainable solutions; achieving 100% circular use of materials; and empowering more than 100,000 people in local communities with new skills.

We put particular emphasis and investment into our sustainable solutions, so our game-changing portfolio of innovative products and technologies is always expanding. This is guided by five key drivers: lower energy and carbon; less waste; reduce, reuse and renew; health and well-being; longer lasting.

Climate change

How we help limit climate change. We focus on halving our carbon emissions in our value chain – by moving to renewable electricity and reducing our overall energy consumption – and developing solutions that help customers reduce overall carbon footprint.

Circularity

How we move towards a circular economy. We’re reducing waste throughout our value chain – increasing the use of renewable and recycled materials and material efficiency – while protecting surfaces and materials, making them last longer.

Health and well-being

How we improve the health and well-being of our employees, customers, end-users and other stakeholders in the communities where we operate. We do this by keeping them safe, healthy and engaged.

Let’s take action on climate change

At AkzoNobel, we’re aware that climate change could affect our operations, our supply chain and our customers. So, in 2017, we committed to becoming a carbon-neutral company by 2050. Now we’re turning this ambition into reality by setting aspirational, science-based targets. As well as aligning with the 1.5°C pathway, this means we’ll increasingly deliver sustainable solutions to our customers.

Our sustainability ambitions

Making buildings greener

The buildings we live and work in can have a big impact on our health and well-being. We supply a wide range of solutions to the construction industry that can help to make cities and communities more sustainable.

Find out how we contribute

How we look after our people

Our focus on people covers many different aspects. It's about ensuring a safe and diverse work environment, developing our talented workforce, embracing our values and our approach to human rights. It also includes the numerous local projects we carry out through our AkzoNobel Cares societal program that bring significant benefits to people and communities around the world.

Learn more

UN Sustainable Development Goals

Our approach to sustainable business is designed to contribute to the global agenda represented by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). All the SDGs inspire our actions and decisions. As a company, we recognize their strategic importance to our business, and to the world – and continue to focus on those SDGs where we can have the biggest impact and integrate them into our sustainability agenda. This agenda is a key driver for business development, innovation and growth. The SDGs will therefore continue to help us take our industry forward and ensure that sustainability remains firmly at the heart of what we do.

Inspired to collaborate with us?

To continue innovating we need to borrow brainpower from startups, academia, suppliers and customer alike.

If you have an innovative solution that would enable AkzoNobel and the industry to become more sustainable, connect with us through our “Innovate with us” program.

Innovate with Us