Continuing Shepherd’s Legacy of Sustainable Production

Today, terms like sustainability, environmentally-friendly, green, renewable and eco-friendly have become commonplace in discussing all aspects of manufacturing operations. Whether because of governmental regulations, enhanced efficiency or consumer demands, competitive companies are actively exploring ways to enhance their sustainability efforts.

At The Shepherd Color Company, the sustainability initiatives being implemented today follow a long history of the company’s investment in practices that are friendly to the environment and people – decades before such practices became popular.

They always have been built into the company culture, according to Geoffrey Peake, Research & Development Manager at Shepherd. In his role, Peake supervises a group of chemists that design and develop new products. He also regularly engages with customers about sustainability

In a recent interview, here is what Peake had to say about how Shepherd continues its legacy of sustainability.       

Innovating for sustainability

Seeking ways to operate more sustainably is a day-to-day pursuit at Shepherd, according to Peake.

Those efforts have led to the development of innovative products like Shepherd’s infrared reflecting pigment. “The idea is that sunlight, as it hits the Earth, is half visible,” he explained. “So half of it contributes to color and the other half is in the infrared, which doesn’t contribute to anything we see. But if you absorb that light, it causes thing to heat up.”

Ordinary pigments used in building materials like roofing can result in higher energy use. “If the roof gets hot, the hotter the pigment gets the more you spend on energy to cool the building,” Peake said. “So, through technology, we have what we call forever reflecting pigment. These can still be dark colors but they can reflect for infrared energy.

“That’s an example of a product that can be more sustainable and that results in lower energy usage,” he added.

Fine-tuning the process

While Shepherd takes the initiatives to develop more sustainable processes, they also respond to requests from clients to that lead its team to research more environmentally-friendly products.

“Sometimes the request is fairly simple,” Peake said. “For example, someone may ask, ‘We would like infrared pigment changed just slightly to make these color effects. That might be a simple solution in which we just take a couple of weeks in the lab to figure out how to do it and then maybe two, three months to get it scaled up in production.”

More complex projects may involve responding to a client’s request to intensify the reflective qualities of a product. “We would work to invent the pigment, which may not be possible, or we may invent one and then scale it up and introduce the product.”

Meeting increased demand

In response to more intense focus on sustainability, The Shepherd Color Company is taking more measures to explore innovative products to meet demand. “The term ‘sustainability’ has only been used fairly recently,” Peake said.

“Certainly, 10 years ago, we weren’t talking about it at all. However, we were working on innovations like infrared reflecting pigments as a way to save energy years ago, so that provided customers with an advantage.

“People consider it a cost advantage. They weren’t talking about it in terms of sustainability,” he said.

As a result of more increased focus on sustainability, Shepherd’s innovations led to other products that minimize harm to people or the planet.

“Our pigments are mixed metal oxide pigments. They are organic pigment which contain metallic elements,” Peake said. “Some of those elements are viewed sometimes rightfully, and sometimes not, as more or less hazardous to health and environment than others.”

Over the years, Shepherd’s team started analyzing its pigments to determine if they could achieve the same colors without certain elements, Peake noted. “Of course, the ones from a long time ago consisted of lead, mercury and cadmium … we don’t want those in our pigments,” he said. “Then, we didn’t want chromates and now it’s sometimes antimony, nickel or cobalt.”

Now, it’s an ongoing process as Shepherd explores the possibilities of re-creating colors with other elements.  

“It’s very challenging. With many of our pigments, one element in particular, called the chromophore, can produce the color. For example, cobalt aluminate blue, a common blue pigment, has cobalt and aluminate oxygen in the material. And it’s the cobalt that produces the color.

“If we want the same color without the cobalt, we’re being asked to invent a brand new chemistry to produce the same color. And that’s challenging.”  

Exploring other avenues of sustainability

In addition to materials, Shepherd also continually explore more energy-efficient ways to manage the manufacturing process, especially since it requires very intense temperatures to get a chemical reaction.

“A lot of energy, a lot of natural gas, is burned to manufacture the pigments,” he noted. “Can we change the process or the chemistry such that we can use less energy? We’ve been trying to do that for a long time to determine if we can use less energy.  We’ve been trying to do that for a long time.”

The company also is looking at ways to minimize water usage as a way to become more sustainable, Peake said. “Advancements that the customer wouldn’t ask for or even know about, we’re working on those things all the time,” he said.