Earlier this month, PaintCare—a nonprofit organization and program of the American Coatings Association that represents paint manufacturers and stewardship programs in the U.S.—announced the winners of its inaugural Innovative Recycling Grant Competition.

This year, the annual competition accepted submissions from Dec. 22, 2018, to March 22. The competition sought to identify and help develop the best ideas for recycling leftover latex paint.

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Earlier this month, PaintCare—a nonprofit organization and program of the American Coatings Association that represents paint manufacturers and stewardship programs in the U.S.—announced the winners of its inaugural Innovative Recycling Grant Competition.

“The majority of the latex paint that recyclers manage is recycled into new paint products,” said PaintCare’s director of operations, Fred Gabriel.

“However, there are limited recycling options for a fraction of the latex paint recyclers receive, such as paint in unmarketable colors or paint that is dried or spoiled. PaintCare believes that there is potential for developing new recycling technologies to address this need, but more support is needed to advance these ideas towards commercialization—and that’s precisely what we set out to do with this competition.”

The Winners

The organization conducted three separate competitions using funding from its programs in California, Colorado and Connecticut for each state’s respective competition. Of the individuals and organizations that submitted, California-based Visions Recycling (a subsidiary of Visions Quality Coatings) and Colorado-based GreenSheen were awarded grants totaling $100,000 each. No qualified submissions had been received in Connecticut.

Visions Recycling plans on using the funds provided by PaintCare for continued testing, market analysis and to expand its operations for the production and commercialization of pre-cast concrete products using unwanted latex paint.

Jerry Noel, president of Visions Recycling, said, “Visions believes that exploring alternative uses for leftover and unwanted latex paint is good for the environment as well as the industry. We are truly grateful for the opportunity to work for such a great organization.”

GreenSheen intends to use its funds for the formulating and testing of a new acrylic polymer admixture (created from waste latex paints) that will act as a partial replacement for mix water in the production of concrete. The company also plans to identify end uses of the product and conduct a market analysis.

“Congratulations to Visions Recycling and GreenSheen, the first companies to be awarded PaintCare’s Innovative Recycling Grant for their work to increase the recycling options for paint,” said Gabriel.