Monetarization – A Life Cycle Assessment weighting methodology. Monetize environmental impacts of paint with and

Abstract

It is today widely recognized that human activities give impacts on the environment. These could for instance result in depleted resources and ecosystems, which give a cost burden for present and future societies. An interest has recently arisen to convert these various environmental impacts to single environmental costs. This procedure is called monetarization. One company working explorative with this issue of economic assessment of environmental impacts is AkzoNobel, focusing its businesses on the main areas: decorative paints, performance coatings and specialty chemicals. This study was conducted in collaboration with AkzoNobel´s sustainability department, with the aim to explore the environmental costs of two decorative paints by utilizing monetarization, which is a weighting methodology within Life Cycle Assessment. Environmental impacts from paints are often regarded of high importance to mitigate and a fairly new strategy is to include modified colloidal silica in paint. This improves and gives new functionalities to the paint implying a prolonged life time. A comparison of two paints, one with and one without modified colloidal silica was performed to investigate the environmental benefits of colloidal silica in paint. The three monetary weighting methods EPS, Stepwise and Ecovalue were selected through a literature review and utilized to accomplish this comparison. Results showed that the expected longer durability of the paint with colloidal silica is a decisive factor for the environmental benefits. It was also identified lack of models to fully cover the environmental impacts from colloidal silica and similar materials. Further work therefore require investigations of these life time benefits but also better understanding of the environmental impacts from colloidal silica in the context of Life Cycle Assessment.