The report reveals record-low levels of energy consumption in production, a sharp decrease in accident rates, and a notable reduction in production waste, including a decrease in the amount sent to landfill.
Established in 1996, the BCF Coatings Care programme monitors and drives improvements in employee health and welfare, safe operational processes, and sustainable practices across the coatings sector. This voluntary programme benchmarks the environmental performance of BCF members against 45 key performance indicators (KPIs), enabling performance changes to be tracked over time. Currently, over 40 UK coatings manufacturing sites participate in the programme.
“We are proud to have been running our Coatings Care programme for nearly 30 years. It enables us, as a sector, to measure performance across a range of important health, safety, and environmental indicators which, in turn, drives progress. This year’s results were particularly satisfaction. Participation among members has increased to the highest levels since 2012. More importantly, though, we have seen record low levels of energy used per tonne of production and big increases in the amount of waste being recycled and much less going to landfill. While we know there is much more to be done to continue to boost our performance, this year’s report shows welcome steps in the right direction and is a tribute to the work BCF members are putting into becoming a more sustainable sector,” has stated Tom Bowtell, CEO of BCF.
The 2024 Coatings Care report demonstrates ongoing progress in the sector’s sustainability efforts. Notably, the report shows that energy use has decreased by 12% compared to 2022, reaching the lowest levels since 2018 in terms of energy consumption per tonne of production. For the consistent sample of 22 companies that have participated in the programme for the last five years, energy use in 2023 was 161 kWh per tonne of production, a 9% reduction from the previous year and 10% lower than in 2020. This represents the lowest recorded energy use since the survey’s inception in 1996.
The majority of participating sites reported zero landfill waste from production. Specifically, 59% of sites stated that all waste was either incinerated or recycled. Among the 22 companies providing consistent data over the past five years, 16 reported no landfill waste at all. Additionally, total waste for this group was 34.6 kg per tonne of production, a 7% decrease from 2023, marking the best result outside the exceptional Covid year of 2020. Recycling rates also increased to 70% of total waste, up from just 17% in 1996, while landfill waste has fallen to just 1%.
Accident rates have also reached a record low, significantly below the accident rates for manufacturing industries reported in the latest UK Labour Force survey. A remarkable 87% of the sites surveyed by BCF for their accident statistics reported no injuries at all.