Colart is building on its longstanding tradition of innovation to drive sustainability throughout its organisation and beyond.
Since the launch of its new integrated Sustainability Strategy, ‘Creating Impact’, in 2024, Lindéngruppen company Colart has accelerated its efforts to embed sustainability across its organisation. This work has built on the recent validation of the company’s science-based climate targets and its B Corp Certification, which have both reinforced sustainability governance and reporting transparency.
Colart has the potential to make a significant positive impact on society through its products and partnerships. Nurturing an innovation culture will be the key to making this happen.
“Some of our brands have been innovating for hundreds of years,” says Sara Brennan, Chief Sustainability and Innovation Officer at Colart. “We are building on this to shape an innovation culture at Colart to influence everything from our product development and how we connect with consumers and employees, to how we advance our sustainability performance.”
“Innovation is essential if we are to achieve our sustainability goals,” explains Sara Brennan. “For example, reaching our net-zero emission climate target depends on finding new solutions to optimise our operations and reduce the environmental impacts of the products we offer.”
Colart continues to innovate in response to increasing consumer demand for more sustainable products, such as by embedding sustainability into its new product development process. Recent innovations include Liquitex bio-based acrylic paint and Lefrance Bourgeois’ new colours in its Flashe range, all of which are made with renewable materials and have a low-carbon footprint.
Colart is also exploring ways to promote sustainability across its wider value chain. For example, it launched the Liquitex and Winsor & Newton Free Recycling Program in the US in 2025 with international recycling leader TerraCycle® to provide artists with a way to recycle traditionally unrecyclable materials, such as used paint tubes and marker pens. In 2026, Colart will roll out TerraCycle in the US, the UK and across Europe in selected customer stores.
“This innovative free take-back service is a great example of how we can help consumers live more sustainably,” says Sara Brennan. “Such initiatives expand our sustainability impact beyond our operations – and empower our consumers to be part of our sustainability journey.”
A key development in early 2026 has been the introduction of Colart’s new tool – Art with Impact™ scale – to assess and drive the positive sustainability impacts of its products. Every Colart product is now being assessed across six sustainability criteria to give one single sustainability impact score.
“The Art with Impact™ scale will help us to better understand the life cycle sustainability performance of our products and identify improvement areas,” explains Sara Brennan. “It will also enable us to measure the overall impacts of our products over time to ensure our product offering continues to develop in the right direction.”
About Colart’s ‘Art with Impact scale’
All Colart products will be assessed on six sustainability criteria:
• Carbon emissions
• Green raw materials
• Responsible packaging
• Endangered minerals
• Human and environment health and safety
• Performance and durability
Each Colart product is designated a category to reflect its overall performance, with the two top categories ‘Established’ and ‘Leader’ considered to be sustainable. The ‘Concern’ category is the lowest category and identifies products that will either be improved in underperforming criteria or replaced from Colart’s product portfolio altogether.
