CEO blog - Does paint cause a problem to the marine environment?

By Tom Bowtell, Chief Executive Officer of the BCF

There was a report published earlier this year that claimed that paint is the largest source of microplastic leakage into our oceans – more than car tyre dust, plastic pellets and fibres from textiles put together.  This led to a lot of raised eyebrows in our sector, given that most reports we’d previously seen estimated paint’s contribution to microplastics pollution to be between 10 and 20%.  Clearly our sector does have an impact, but is paint really a bigger problem than car tyre dust and textiles?

This new report claimed paint creates 58% of the world’s microplastics – it was a study funded by the European Commission, called Plastic Paint by Swiss based environmental NGO Environmental Action. So, is this report credible?

Well, it is somewhat timely that the World Coatings Council’s Secretariat, the American Coatings Association (ACA), has recently published a Literature Review aimed at establishing the state of the science and available data on microplastics generated by paints and coatings.

The ACA literature search identified and analysed 36 key documents, to produce a summary of the current scientific state of knowledge on paints and coatings related microplastics.  The short conclusion is that there is simply no real data quantifying the contribution of paint to microplastics pollution.  Many of these reports therefore employ a range of assumptions regarding paint degradation rates and removal practices in order to estimate the contribution of paint.  With the exception of the EA report referred to above, the range of paint’s contribution to microplastics pollution is actually estimated to be between 9.6% and 21%.

CEPE, the European Paint Association, has written to the European Commission to explain the many flaws in the assumptions made in the EA report, which the authors themselves admit is an outlier in terms of its conclusions in positioning the size of the impact of paint compared to other sources of microplastics.  It is of course critical that conclusions in publication and discussion apportioning responsibility on any industry be based on scientifically substantiated data and rigorous real-world study.

However, we cannot hide from the fact that we are part of the problem, and the European Commission has the paint industry in its sights when looking at future regulations to control microplastic leakage.

It is a fact that road marking and anti-fouling coatings will end up in the marine environment. To some extent other exterior coatings will too, as will a small percentage of decorative paint when paint brushes and rollers are washed in water. There are things we can do as consumers to reduce the water used in this process and the amount of paint that goes down the drain.  We are currently working on a new video to get this message across to the public. The same is true when people re-paint their boats, and BCF have a campaign to educate boat owners called the Protect, Collect and Dispose Antifouling Initiative. One of the aims of the campaign is to work to prevent the release of paint flakes when sanding into the marine environment.

Going back to the Literature Review conducted by World Coatings Council, it is clear there is limited knowledge on the source, environmental contribution, environmental and human health risks, and impact in wastewater from paint-related microplastics.  If we are to defend ourselves, we need to build credible data on what impact we are having.  I am pleased to say that CEPE are currently working on several studies for both masonry paint and anti-fouling paint.

In conclusion, paint isn’t the largest contributor of microplastics in the marine environment, but we do have some impact, so should not be complacent.  In my role as the current President of the World Coatings Council, I will be ensuring we get the right messages out there so we can better defend ourselves.

You can read more about BCF’s view of the topic of microplastics in paint via the FAQ section of BCF’s new website, which also links to the World Coatings Council paper - it includes a lot more detail than I could cover here.