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PaintCare Giving Away Paint in CA
Paint-recycling group PaintCare has recently announced that it will be giving away around 2,000 gallons of paint in Merced, California.
The paint giveaway is apart of a partnership with ACT Enviro in Merced, California to host three events in May, June and July of this year.
US PaintCare Expansion
Oregon was the first state to adopt the PaintCare program into law in 2009. Over the past decade, similar laws in California, Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Maine, Minnesota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington have been adopted.
According to the organization, there are more than 2,000 drop-off sites across all PaintCare’s programs, most of which are located at paint and hardware retail stores. In addition, PaintCare has managed paint from more than 5,840 collection events.
In July 2019, the New York State Assembly approved legislation establishing a PaintCare program.
The non-profit 501(c)(3) organization was established in 2009 and works through a Paint Producer Stewardship Initiative, which is facilitated by the Product Stewardship Institute. In August 2021, the program was reported to have collected over 50 million gallons of paint.
New York Assembly Bill A6373 established the PaintCare program within the state and requires that producers of architectural coatings sold in retail or through a representative organization within the state submit a plan to the commissioner of environmental conservation for the establishment of the program and forbids a producer or retailer to sell architectural paint unless it has already implemented an approved program plan.
In March 2021, New Jersey’s state Assembly Environment and Solid Waste Committee unanimously passed legislation for a PaintCare program—a paint stewardship program involving paint manufacturers and producers in conjunction with the American Coatings Association. The measure was expected to go to the state house.
At the time, ACA said that this could be critical in New Jersey, where only five of the 21 counties even accept latex paint for recycling and proper disposal—latex paint being 80% of the paint sold today. Those few counties that do accept latex paint do so at a great cost. For example, Ocean County reported spending over $200,000 on its paint management program in 2013 alone.
For municipalities that participate in the collection, the program would pay them to transport and manage the product, meaning that the bill could help save money at the county level.
ACA worked with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, as well as the state’s local waste authorities, HHW program managers and Product Stewardship Councils.
Free Paint in CA
According to reports, on July 16 PaintCare will be giving away paint at the ACTenviro Transfer station at 265 Riggs Avenue in Merced, California.
The event follows previous giveaways in May and June, where it was noted that more than 2,000 gallons of paint of free paint were given away to those who attended. The recycled paint product is a result of previously donated paint dropped off at the drop-off sites across the state.
At the next event, attendees will be able to browse and choose from up to 25 gallons of paint from partially filled containers. However, participants who wish to attend the giveaway are asked to register.
Paint can also be dropped off at the time of the event. For more information, click here.
In August, PaintCare is also planning a similar paint giveaway in Redlands, California. The event is slated to take place on August 20. More information can be found here.
Other PaintCare News
In November, the British Coatings Federation (BCF) announced that it would be committing to new targets for its PaintCare program. The ambitious new target calls for increasing the percentage of leftover paint reused, recycled or remanufactured from the current 2% to 75% by 2030.
According to BCF, sustainable production and recycling of paint have been a key focus in the United Kingdom’s coating industry since 1996 and are the basis for nearly 50 health, safety and environment key performance indicators monitored through the BCF’s Coatings Care program.
Latest Coatings Care figures showed record low levels of energy used in production as well as a significant decrease in production waste. Additional figures revealed that 71% of production waste is now recycled, compared to 17% in 1996.
In April of this year, a latex paint recycling company based out of Colorado started setting up operations in Rotterdam, New York, to reprocess old architectural coatings under the state’s new paint stewardship rules.
GreenSheen leased 40,000 square feet in the Rotterdam Corporate Park for the recycling facility, with plans to hire 25 people. By August, the paint recycler plans to be operating at 60-70% capacity.
During the recycling process, GreenSheen filters and purifies waste paint into 18 basic colors and sells the recycled product in 1- to 275-gallon containers. Noted to have an eggshell finish, the acrylic can be used for interior or exterior applications and has a five-year warranty.
GreenSheen Founder and CEO, Kevin Callahan, predicts that once the facility is operating at full capacity, the New York recycling plant will be larger than all of its other operations combined.
In May, PaintCare released its first annual report for its Washington paint recycling program, reporting that it collected approximately 842,000 gallons of unwanted paint during the first year of operations.
The annual report added that of the latex paint dropped off during the first year, 88.1% was recycled back into paint.
PaintCare further noted that 581,363 gallons were collected in just the first nine months of the Washington program—89% of that was latex and 11% was oil-based. The program, which is guided by the state’s paint stewardship law (SHB 1652), officially launched on April 1, 2021, and is comprised of 210 year-round drop-off sites.
That same month, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation formally announced that a new paint recycling program was underway. The DEC will oversee the New York State Postconsumer Paint Collection Program; however, the program will be operated by PaintCare.
According to the DEC, the program will accept leftover latex and oil-based paints and similar products at drop-off sites throughout the state. The program is funded by consumer PaintCare fees on the sale of all new paint in New York.
Editor's Note: This article was corrected on July 6, 2022, at 3:22 p.m. to reflect that the paint giveaway event will be ending in Merced, California, after July 16.
