Reducing and avoiding waste – just something we do at KREUL

11/28/2022 |

Paints make life more colourful. But if we look at them a little less emotionally, paints are also consumer products. They come in packaging, and they have a limited lifetime. And at some point in time, they generate waste. As a responsible paint manufacturer, we don’t want to stand idly by and watch as the mountains of waste grow.

 

Our solution is a conscious use of existing resources. Less waste is produced if we use the things we've already got as long as possible, and make sure they can be reused or something new can be made out of them.

 

What does that look like precisely? We’d like to tell you about our approaches to reducing waste.

 

Long use thanks to high quality and yield

Lumpy consistency, dried and clogged-up paint lids and caps: it's so frustratiing when you have to throw out creative products not that long after you've bought them. Since our founding over 180 years ago, we have therefore been manufacturing quality products. From their formulation to their containers, KREUL paints are of such high quality that they can be used for a long time

Often for years even, providing artists seal and store their opened paints properly. We recommend keeping the lids of opened paint jars clean, putting the lids back on jars and caps on markers after you have used them and not to store paints near any heating.

Unopened paints from KREUL have a very long lifetime. Products that we have taken out of our assortment, still displaying an outdated logo, or display products are usually still perfectly useable. It would be such a pity just to throw them out. Two or three times a year, we offer this old stock in a sale of surplus stock at cut-down prices. We shall announce the date of the next sale in good time in our  
KREUL Newsletter.

KREUL paints are also very high-yield products. Our DIY acrylic colours are opaque – so you ony need a small amount of paint to effectively design decorative items with just one coat of paint. You can thin our artists' acrylic paints with water, but the colours remain brilliant. Many KREUL products are available in large jars and bottles. For example, we produce SOLO GOYA Acrylic in 250-ml bottles, and SOLO GOYA Triton Acrylic even in 750-ml bottles. Fantastic for schools and artists who paint frequently.

The refill concept: refill instead of throwaway markers

How many markers land in the bin although they are technically still completely in order? A simply incredible number!  They have simply run dry. The body of the marker, the pump system, and the tip are completely intact. The only thing missing is the ink or paint. Here's our chance to make a change.

If empty markers can be refilled, less plastic waste is produced. We have already introduced this solution for the KREUL Triton Acrylic Marker. The most commonly used colours of the KREUL Textile Marker Opak, that is black and white, are refillable. We explain 

here

 how much plastic can be saved this way.


 

Cardboard instead of plastic

Packaging is practical. It not only protects a product not only during transport, but bundles individual products in sets. These sets give you everything you need to be creative in one place. Marker sets make it easier to select coordinated colours.

After you buy a set, the packaging has fulfilled its purpose and it lands in the bin. But that's not its last stop. Our set packaging, even packaging for marker sets, is made of cardboard.

So they can be recycled and used to make new paper products. You can find out 
here about how many tonnes CO2 could be saved in 2021 thanks to the recycling of our sales packaging.



 

Reuse and optimization solutions in paint manufacture

What about the waste produced before our paints are sold? For delivery and during production, packaging is necessary. But in the manufacture of KREUL paints, we have optimized our workflows so that less waste is produced.

  • For storage, processing and transport, we have acquired large intermediate bulk containers (IBCs). We use these over and over.
  • We reduce the use of transport drums by mixing large quantities of paint. From these, small quantities are filled into the containers for different products.
  • To transport products or other things within our plant, we use reusable folding boxes.
  • Shrinkwrap isn’t used at KREUL. Since 2013, we have been able to reduce our film packaging by 90 %.

Here we have listed the other measures we have implemented in our production plant to reduce waste.