Reduce Waste – Recycle Your Paint

Each year, about 10% of the paint sold in the United States – over 60 million gallons – is discarded or stored. Recycling this paint makes common sense, but here are a few more reasons why recycling your leftover paint is the right thing to do.

Conserve natural resources. Reduce air and water pollution.

Recycling latex paint makes use of a valuable resource and lessens the need to manufacture new paint. Recycling paint reduces the amount of minerals and chemicals that would normally be used to manufacture paint. This conserves energy and water and reduces the pollution that comes with manufacturing and transporting new materials.

When paint is not recycled, it sometimes enters the environment where it can do harm. Disposing of paint in storm drains or dumping it directly on the environment is illegal, and it’s the worst way to get rid of materials that can be reused.

Landfills don’t want liquid paint.

With a few exceptions, landfills are not designed to take liquid paint as waste. Most have strict rules against dumping liquid paint in the landfill. The vast majority of landfills are solid waste landfills, and they can’t accept liquids or hazardous waste.

Waste management companies don’t want liquid paint.

When liquid paint is added to garbage and picked up at the curb, it can spill into the street, on the truck and on the driver. Paint spilled from garbage draws frequent complaints to the waste hauler. A garbage truck is a mobile compactor that is not designed to take large amounts of liquids. For all these reasons, garbage is not the place to dispose of liquid paint.

Stop buying new products to turn usable paint into garbage.

Latex paint is considered non-hazardous, so once it is completely dry, it can usually be thrown in the garbage. The problem is that gallons of paint don’t dry quickly. To speed up the process, the paint can be mixed with kitty litter or paint hardener. Why spend money on new products in order to turn a valuable resource into garbage? Recycling is a much better option.

Stop spending your time turning usable paint into garbage.

“I’ve got nothing better to do this weekend so I’ll spend it turning my paint into garbage.” said no one ever.

Reduce waste. Recycling your paint makes sense.