Environmental stewardship has driven our research and development portfolio for more than a century. That rich history has embedded the commitment to innovate products and processes that provide environmental and other sustainability benefits to our customers.
In 2017, 32 percent of our total sales were derived from sustainable-advantaged products and processes. Our goal was to achieve 40 percent by 2020 after meeting our initial 30 percent goal five years ahead of schedule in 2015. Our new goal for 2018 onward is to achieve 40 percent of sales from sustainable products and processes by 2025.
Our coatings, materials and technologies reduce corrosion, extending the life of our customers’ products. We also help our customers reduce energy usage and emissions, protect their employees and minimize waste and water consumption through the use of our products.
A key aspect of our product development process is selecting sustainable and safe materials to manufacture a product. We actively seek to avoid chemicals of concern, and we have committed to remove lead from our remaining non-consumer coatings formulations by 2020. None of our consumer paints worldwide contains lead.
We publicly communicate transparent and comparable information about the environmental impact of our products through independently verified life cycle assessments (LCA) and validated environmental product declarations (EPD). We also provide transparency into product contents and associated health information through health product declarations (HPDs) and other disclosure tools used in the building industry.
Our current focus is developing these types of documents for products that can help end customers meet their green building initiatives, such as the Leadership in Energy and Environment Design (LEED) certification. Examples of LCAs, EPDs and HPDs can be found on our PPG PAINTS™ website.
Sustainable-advantaged product innovation is more than a business strategy at PPG. It is a commitment to the environment, our customers and our people.
Lead Commitment
We do not use lead as an ingredient in our consumer paints and coatings anywhere in the world. We have proactively eliminated lead from all new formulations for a number of years and will not use lead in new formulations in the future. We also develop plans to eliminate lead from products that become part of our portfolio through acquisitions as part of our integration process.
We are committed to eliminating lead by 2020 from the small quantity of non-consumer coatings formulations that remain in our portfolio. These non-consumer products, which comprise less than 1 percent of our entire portfolio, include lead solely to meet the unique specifications of certain customers. In 2017, we eliminated 43 percent of these products.
One example of our efforts in this area is within our global protective and marine coatings business, which eliminated lead from the manufacture of all product formulations in 2016. Our other non-consumer-facing businesses are following a similar path to meet the 2020 lead-free goal.