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Quick: form a mental image of the back of someone’s basement. Alright, do you have a picture in your head?
There’s a fantastic chance that your picture, and maybe this is even your own basement, included more than a few leftover paint cans. You were hoping to get around to repainting the fence running along the side of your house or touching up some flecks in your den (what are those anyway?) but life got in the way.
Whether you purchased too much paint or simply used a smaller amount of what you did purchase than you’d anticipated using in your hypomanic Home Depot shopping spree, you have some paint cans on your hands and are probably hoping someone would take them off your hands (and out of your basement) pretty soon.
Paint Take-Back Programs
Starting in 2009 in Oregon, then 2012 in California, states starting forcing paint companies to coordinate with take-back recycling programs. Unlike swapping baseball cards at recess, paint “take-back” programs are definitely something desirable if you’re concerned about keeping this planet clean and doing the right thing.
Paint take-back programs are synonymously called paint stewardship initiatives. The most popular one in California is known as PaintCare, and PaintCare has been helping Californians recycle since the passing of legislation in 2012.
PaintCare’s credo is that it helps homeowners and business owners explore ways to responsibly recycle their leftover or unwanted paint. This is hugely convenient for you and me while also doing more than a few favors by the environment.
PaintCare lives up to its name by partnering up with paint companies and creating a network of over 700 take-back locations across the state. Many of these paint take-back locations are paint retailers and home improvement stores themselves. These services are available to any business owner or homeowner who wants to make use of them.
Working in states like Colorado and Connecticut as well as California, PaintCare ultimately leads to less toxic waste winding up at landfills. The program also makes your home or place of business safer by having less reactive material – reactive in the sense that it could explode and cause one heck of a mess – out of your way.
Follow the link below, punch in the location of your home or business and find out about the closest paint take-back location in your area.
Generally, there are few restrictions on how much, or what, can be dropped off. As a rule of thumb latex paint is much easier to recycle than oil-based products and businesses with less than 200 pounds of collective hazardous waste per month shouldn’t have a problem entering most trade-back programs in their state.
Tips for Creating Less Waste
Having fewer paint cans dotting the back of your apartment (or your company’s basement) depends on following a few guidelines.
Simple as it sounds, purchasing the right amount of paint for the job is one of the easiest ways of not only saving money on the stuff but also keeping more unused paint needing to be recycled in the first place.
Going back to high school geometry class and multiplying the length by the height of the area that you need painted is a great way to avoid purchasing more paint than you reasonably need for the job. Bonus tip: a gallon of paint typically covers just over 300 square feet.
You might also want to consider reusing latex paint. Unused latex paint can be recombined and repurposed as a usable base coat. If you have oil-based paint, though, it’s best to consider it hazardous waste and have it responsibly disposed.
