Most of the time, our home improvement projects like remodeling or painting and changing the colour of our rooms will end up in leftover paints. Lots of people just throw the leftovers down the drain without realizing the danger of this hazardous material. It also ends up in landfills and all of these disposals of paint leftover whether it is oil-based or latex-based paints have harmful chemicals where sewage treatment facilities cannot remove it. In the end, the waste material will go straight to our groundwater, waterways, and also the oceans. Below are some of the tips and ideas of what to do with the leftovers of recycled paint.
What you need:
- Leftover Paints
- Paper Bag
- Sawdust, sand or cat litter
- Get information\’s from the local hazardous materials resource center
Method:
- You can keep some of the paint for any future touch-ups. The leftover paints can be kept in an air-tight container in a cool and dry storage room.
- You could also consider giving the leftover paints to neighbours, friends or family who wanted to do painting work to their own house.
- Besides that, you could also do some information gathering from the local hazardous materials resource center on whether there are other options for recycle paint disposal or paint recycling programs. Some of the paint recycling programs will recycled your leftover paints, reprocessed or reblended them before it is being resold to other parties for other usage.
- If you do not have any other options to do for disposing of latex or water-based paint, you can use a paper bag and fill it with sawdust, sand or cat litter. Then, pour the remaining latex into the bag and wait until the paint absorbed by the sawdust, sand or cat litter. The paper bag can be disposed together with your other household garbage.
- The method used in Step 4 cannot be used on oil-based paints because the paint will cause potential environmental and public health risks. Therefore, always remember not to mix the oil-based paint together with the latex paints because both of them cannot be recycled together due to its different state of content.
- Apart from that, you can also do some information gathering on whether there are recycling centers that recycle your old steel paint cans.
Additional Reading:
http://earth911.com/recycling/hazardous/paint/paint-recycling-101/
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/home-garden/resource-center/easy-ways-to-properly-dispose-of-leftover-paint-8-07/overview/0708_ways_to_dispose_of_leftover_paint.htm
http://www.ehow.com/how_172641_recycle-paint.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_172626_dispose-paint.html
Image Credit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8078381@N03/2389552314/
