A Christchurch-based company are disrupting the paint industry with their non-toxic, sustainable and durable products.
Natural Paint Co was founded by entrepreneurs James Mount and Grace Glass 7 years ago.
Grace Class and James Mount of Natural Paint Co Photo: Supplied
James Mount fell into the paint industry when he was figuring out what to do after university. Grace Glass was working as a nurse at the time.
Before founding Natural Paint Co at just 22 years old, the entrepreneurial pair were already conscious consumers with an eye on health and sustainability, Mount tells Kathryn Ryan.
“Being in the paint industry was a real eye-opener to how reliant it was on petro-chemicals and hadn’t really changed in the last 50 years. We’re seeing other industries make shifts to be more aware of the impact and utilise more sustainable materials and also the impact on consumers’ health,” he says.
He decided to look into ways of addressing that, by creating quality non-toxic paint products with sustainable materials.
“There’s been a shift from some solvent-based products to water-based, which was a move in the right direction ... But for us, when we did a deep dive into it, really it was actually quite alarming with how little has changed so far.
“One big motivator for us was when we looked at a big EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) study, which looks at indoor air quality – this is throughout the world – it found our indoor air is on average two-to-five times more toxic than outside.
"A freshly-painted room can have air that is up to 1,000 times more polluted than the air outside and the resultant effects on people’s health can be quite alarming – from minor dizziness, asthma and allergies, sore throats and headaches to a larger range of acute and chronic health issues.”
UK studies have found professional painters had a 20 percent increased risk of cancer and 30 percent increased risk of bladder cancer.
There is a lack of transparency in the paint industry about the thousands of chemicals used – many of which aren’t needed, Mount says.
Producers overseas had attempted to address these dangers, with varying degrees of success. Some German paints which had stripped back many of these chemicals lacked durability and didn’t wash well, he found.
Mount and Glass knew that to be successful, they would need to create products that were both sustainable and durable.
“We found some of New Zealand’s top paint chemists, one of them in the industry for 40 years, and we tasked them with basically can we create a product which is as good as or better than what’s on the market, but we don’t want to use any ingredients that have any known health effects on humans or animals during or after painting. And we want to prioritise natural ingredients.”
The pair eventually succeeded in engineering a line of high-coverage paint products made with natural clays, pigments and resins and without chemical fillers.
“Texanol – which is pretty much in every water-based paint – that was more of a challenge [to leave out]. [But] we created a paint that doesn’t need one of the most popular paint dryers in the world. Texanol itself has reproductive toxicity."
They also removed the usual volatile organic compounds (VOCs) – chemicals that release, or “off-gas”, into the indoor air we breathe.
Natural Paint Co replaced cheaper synthetic components of paint with natural ingredients like titanium dioxide, and calcium bicarbonate, a chalk powder giving the paint body and fullness.
Sourcing chemicals like titanium dioxide sustainably was challenging, Mount says.
“We’ve done everything to look at our supply chain, right from where we’re getting the products, the process that it goes through before coming to us and we have sourced what we can from New Zealand."
Manuka oil was added to act as a natural anti-bacterial element, while diatomaceous earth acts as a matting agent and further adds to the body of the paint.
“One of our main resins is a plant resin that comes out of Europe and it’s made of natural gums, soya bean and a bit of linseed oil, rather than relying of a petrochemical acrylic resin,” he adds.
Natural Paint Co's products are industry-certified for quality and have a guarantee of durability twice that offered by most other paint brands, Mount says.
“That’s where a lot of the science and technical side of it has been over the last seven years, constantly refining the product to make it as good as possible and we now have a 25 year interior guarantee, which is double what most other chemical paint brands will offer in the industry.
“That’s been underwritten with our chemists and chemical manufacturing team, going through pretty rigorous pressure testing to make sure that it can hold up to the standards.
“We also have the Declare certification, which is through the Living Building Challenge and it’s basically a building certification that’s internationally recognised and looks at the real deep dive into the ingredients that are used, how they’re sourced and they have an intensive ‘red’ list of materials which are known to be quite nasty in paints that you’re not allowed to use. So that’s quite a useful list to compare our products to and we’re the only New Zealand company to have that.”
Natural Paint Co's sales are online-only and Covid-19 restrictions have accelerated their sales, Mount says.
“The biggest challenge has been market awareness, I suppose, but when you have a good product and people are looking for it, and it gets into people’s hands, then the cool thing about Kiwis we like to tell other people when we have a really good experience when we find a product that really aligns with our values."
