Thank you very much to all who responded to my previous post. The advice is overwhelmingly in favor of using the paint that I presently have, with the reasoning being that energy has already been expended in manufacturing the paint and getting it to my house; putting forth additional energy and money to transport the old paint to the hazardous waste facility AND purchase and take home new paint would likely not offset the benefits of "recycling" the old paint and using a low-VOC product. In a nutshell, Greg's comment reminds us that "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" is more than a set of options, it is also an order of operations. Reducing (by using the old paint) is a better choice than recycling and purchasing anew. Note that "purchasing new," even an eco-product, is not even on this list. It is amazing how quickly our retail-oriented world can cause us to lose track of the most basic of environmental tenets.
I would like to follow up on two points made by Sustainability Guy. First of all, a call to the Butte Regional Household Hazardous Waste Facility revealed that the paint would indeed NOT be recycled; rather it would be either reused for a project such as painting over graffiti or would be taken to a waste disposal facility and incinerated. The woman I spoke to echoed the comments of one reader, suggesting that it would be better to donate perfectly good paint (even if it is higher VOC content) to a cause such as Habitat for Humanity.
However, a conversation with a representative at Kelly-Moore's home office in Sacramento revealed that paints CAN be recycled. The gentleman was proud to report that Kelly-Moore is the only large-scale paint company to have a program where the public may return excess Kelly-Moore latex paint (in the original can) to the Sacramento facility at 5101 Raley Boulevard, where it is then reprocessed and resold. Similar to many other recycled products, the energy required to reprocess the paint is a fraction of the cost to produce a virgin product, and thus Kelly-Moore's E-Coat line of recycled paints retails for about $7.75 per gallon, roughly a quarter the cost of purchasing new paint. The VOC content of these paints is relatively high, as much as 250 grams per liter.
More information on recycled paints can be found by checking out: California Integrated Waste Management Board.
About Me: Jeremy wears many hats, including substitute teacher, school garden educator, hike leader, youth group advisor, Gardener's Swap Meet coordinator, husband, and father. His lifelong quests include the search for the perfect burrito, and more recently, how to sprout an avocado tree from a pit.
What about the application method.Sprayers,rollers,brushs, late night gizmos.Some methods contribute more to the problem
When it comes to cleaning is it better to toss it to the landfill or wash it.
If we wash whats better. City sewer or the ground.
Lifecycle is part of the equation. Cheap paint or the wrong paint only makes the problem worse.
If it was only about the paint it would be easy.
Mike
Mike--As far as paint application, my gut feeling is that using a brush or a roller would be better than spraying since less material is being released into the air.
As far as disposal of water-based latex paint is concerned, the most complete system I found was courtesy of a New Zealand company, presented in the the following link: http://www.resene.co.nz/homeown/probsolv/prob5.htm, the only element I take exception with is that I would not recommend pouring any water onto the ground that has had contact with paint, regardless of how "clean" it looks.
Closer to home, the folks at the City of Chico recommend the following for latex paint cleanup:
1) wiping down wet brushes and paint trays on a piece of paper towel or newspaper, allowing it to dry, and then placing the towel into the garbage
2) rinse the remaining paint off in a bucket of water, allow the water in the bucket to evaporate, and throw the dried solids into the trash
3) avoid getting the paint water into the street, and if at all possible, keep it from going down the drain as well.
But you are right. If it was only about the paint.
Jeremy
My experiments with paint related to how they effect the temperature of Stevenson screens (weather shelters) has told me something important I didn't know.
That is that whitewash is a superior coating for insulating a building from solar insolation, both visible and IR. Wood treated with whitewash is about 4-5 degrees cooler during the day at peak sun than latex paint. It's also warmer at night.
And, whitewash reduces to calcium carbonate and water, far less of a pollutant to dispose of. In fact you can simply let it dry int he bucket and then crumble it up and mix with soil. It's simple limestone at that point.