Abstract
The overarching goal worldwide for the scientific community is "sustainable development" today, for an everlasting sustainable and green tomorrow. The strategy includes (i) harvesting renewable resources instead of fossil fuels, (ii) using environment friendly routes, and (iii) engineering material degradation pathways operating under reasonable time frames. The concept revolves around the focal point of "Green" or "Sustainable" Chemistry. In the world of coatings, the idea has already made its debut in the form of environment friendly technologies-low or no solvent, high solids, hyperbranched, water borne and UV curable coatings, utilising monomers/polymers derived from renewable resources. Vegetable oils [VEGO] constitute Mother Nature's most abundant, cost-effective, non toxic, and biodegradable resource. They have been traditionally used for several non-food applications mainly coatings since primitive times. Today, the implementation of the modern technologies coupled with the full fledged use of VEGO based monomers or polymers in the field as raw materials, is an excellent effort toward sustainable future in the world of coatings globally. The review highlights some state-of-the art-modifications of VEGO as environment friendly-low or no solvent, high solids, hyperbranched, water borne and UV curable coatings. The article provides a handy overall vision of VEGO based environment friendly coatings on a single platform. These approaches can be well employed on those oils that are non-edible, non-medicinal and are left unexplored, unutilised or underutilised to date, thus adding value to an unutilised or underutilised sustainable resource. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.