Paint Technology: Bio-Renewable Content to Moisture Control – GreenBuildingAdvisor

Green Building News

GBA connected with industry leaders to discuss some new products that have come to market

Consider this expression: If these walls could talk. It’s an interesting proposition to be sure, and occasionally a sobering one. But let’s take it literally. In the average American household, for instance, those walls would have quite a lot to complain about.

The durability, washability, and quick adhesion that consumers have come to expect from most off-the-shelf interior paint products is attributable to one thing: binders. Common binders like acrylic, vinyl, and styrene are what make most latex paint brands accessible to the average consumer.  The best-selling interior paint in the U.S. is Sherwin-Williams’ SuperPaint line, an affordable, mid-tier product used in large numbers by contractors and DIYers. In descending order, Behr, Benjamin Moore, PPG, and Valspar comprise the remaining top-selling U.S. brands.

Many of the acrylic-based products made by those brands and others also happen to be major sources of plastic pollution. And because they neither biodegrade nor have viable reuse pathways, latex paints now represent the single largest source of microplastics in our oceans, according to findings by the Swiss group Earth Action. Something has to give.

Going “bio-based”

In 2014, Benjamin Moore introduced a line called Natura Renew, a joint development with DSM that the company touted as the “industry’s first bio-renewable paint,” composed of up to 40% bio-renewable materials. This “breakthrough innovation” arrived not a moment too soon, but for any number of reasons, market adoption was underwhelming. “Their plans were to launch nationally after an initial launch in the Northwest. All I can say is that [Natura Renew] is no longer on the market,” says Gary Dandreaux, former vice president in charge of R&D and product development at Benjamin Moore who now runs the consultancy Polaris Chemical Consulting.

Despite this failure, or false start, as it were, the die was…