If it were so easy.Volkswagen Canada is taking public art to the next level by launching the first of what it calls three commissioned murals using ‘pollution-eating’ paint in Toronto and Edmonton. In addition, it is donating an unspecified amount of the paint to Calgary’s BUMP Festival to commission a fourth. The murals will go ‘live’ on May 6 in two locations in Toronto and a third in Edmonton, covering more than 5,600-sq.ft. of blank wall space while the fourth will contribute to at least one large-scale project in Calgary’s BUMP public art festival as part of what the company calls “an accessible and sustainable” public art exhibit touting its line of poorly selling EVs..Volkswagen says it has made more than 850,000 metric tonnes of CO2 globally since 2017 and is on track to decrease its dealer network’s carbon footprint 30% by 2030."We've made significant progress as an organization and it's become second nature to consider the sustainability and environmental impact of our work for the future of mobility," says Edgar Estrada, the brand president. "These murals serve as a visual and engaging representation of our vision for a greener city and a greener world, where even street art helps to reduce carbon emissions."The paint is unique because it uses so-called ‘photocatalytic’ compounds that oxidize organic compounds in the presence of ultraviolet light..Volkswagen says it is developing titanium dioxide coatings to be used on its cars to absorb pollution from the environment.The only problem is that the current generation of titanium dioxide paints don’t work as advertised, according to the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology. Studies have shown photocatalytic paints actually create a series of new volatile organic compounds, releasing nanoparticles — formaldehyde among them, which is an irritant and classed as a carcinogen.Says Bernd Nowack, a specialist in environmental risk assessments of nanoparticles from at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology: “Only large-scale studies will be able to show if these paints really have any effect on air pollution, modelling will be very important here. The study could provide some of the input data for these models or help to design the large-scale studies.”
