Reduce your Environmental footprint

Reduce Hazardous Solvent Use

Solvents serve many purposes in a surface coating facility, such as altering the viscosity of coatings, cleaning areas that are to be coated, and cleaning coating spray equipment. Most commonly used solvents contain high percentages of HAPs and VOCs, but alternative non-HAP and low-VOC solvents are readily available, and your Green Suppliers Network review could assist you in determining whether they are appropriate for use in your process. Facilities can also incorporate strategies, such as solvent recycling and recovery, to minimize solvent use and the amount of waste solvent. Cleaning spray guns in enclosed cleaning units is one way to reuse and recover used solvents. Such units reuse the same solvent instead of disposing of it and also limit fugitive emissions. Other ways of limiting solvent use include avoiding unnecessary cleaning, dedicating a spray gun to a specific coating or color, and cleaning equipment immediately after use. Decreasing or eliminating harmful solvent use can cut disposal costs for spent solvents, used rags, and worn personal protective equipment.

Substitute non HAP or low VOC coatings for conventional coatings

Many surface coatings contain toxic substances, such as lead and hexavalent chromium to provide corrosion protection. Advances in coating technologies now allow for many non-HAP coatings to perform as well as existing, more hazardous coatings. Alternative non-HAP and low-VOC coatings are also readily available, and your Green Suppliers Network review can assist you in determining if they are appropriate for use in your process. Reducing or eliminating HAP-containing coating use can lead to reductions in disposal costs from waste coating containers and spray booth filters.

Reduce overspray

Overspray is the largest potential source of air pollution from the surface coating process. At least 50 percent of the volume of coatings from a typical spray coating line becomes overspray. The clean strategies previously mentioned help reduce overspray, but facilities should capture remaining overspray by spraying base and top coatings in a filtered enclosed spray booth or filtered workstation; in fact, many NESHAP regulations require emissions to be captured. Your Green Suppliers Network review team can examine your overspray control measures to ensure that they are performing as effectively as possible.

Reduce Rework

Many specialty coatings depend greatly on quality control, precision thickness, precise application rates, and controlled spray environments. Rework generates unnecessary wastes in the form of used solvent strippers, air emissions from overspray, and spent filters from pollution control technologies. Green Suppliers Network representatives use Lean and Clean techniques such as value stream mapping to show the root causes of the need for rework. You should involve operational personnel in your review team because they are the most likely to know how to dramatically improve quality and reduce rework.