The last 20 years we witness enormous research activities with an aim to reduce the solvent emission from organic coatings. It is practically impossible to summarize the whole work done in a paper like this, despite its ambitious title. Therefore, the overview of the achievements in water-borne, powder, and high-solids coatings will be limited to the last five years only. Radiation-curing coatings, which belong to the environmentally friendly products, represent an important area as such. Because of the relatively small volume and rather minor environmental impact, they will not be regarded. The paper is concluded with the thankless task of predicting the future trends. As usually, it should be regarded as a combination of wishful thinking and extrapolation of the present knowledge and ideas to the years to come.
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