Vegetable Oil in Paint is Nothing New

I was just looking at the February issue of

Environmental Building News (

Vol. 12, No. 2) and couldn’t help but notice the article about paints made from vegetable oil (“American Pride – Paint Made from Vegetable Oil”). I have to say that someone appears to have pulled the wool over someone’s eyes. Making paints from vegetable products is not a new thing. Oil-based paints have been made with linseed oil (from the flax plant) and turpentine (from long-leaf pine trees) for several hundred years. Soya-alkyd paints (made from soybeans) have been around for at least 50 years. The VOC numbers, however, are very good.

In talking about the scrubbability, you should consider a comparison with the Master Painters Institute (MPI) standards rather than Green Seal. MPI requires 2,000 scrub cycles for an interior satin latex and 1,500 for an interior low-sheen latex, with not more than 25% change in gloss (which is quite different from failure).

Eugene A. (Buz) Groshong, Jr., CCS

Arcom MASTERSPEC

Alexandria, Virginia

Editor’s response:

Thank you for the comments. You’re right—plant-based oils are nothing new in paint. What is unique about American Pride is the fact that they are using plant-derived hydrocarbons to make a

latex paint. This paint is not entirely free of petrochemicals (the company won’t say exactly how much of the product is vegetable-based due to concerns about losing their competitive advantage), but it is largely plant-based, with the benefits of almost no VOCs and soap-and-water cleanup.

Regarding the scrub tests, we agree that we should have used the MPI standards as a benchmark. Had we done so, we would have seen that the eggshell finish paint exceeds MPI’s standard, but the flat paint falls short.

– NM