American Coatings Association

ACA’s PaintCare program plan has been officially approved by CalRecycle, California’s Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery. The California PaintCare program will officially start Oct. 19, 2012. 

PaintCare^® Inc. submitted its program plan for its California PaintCare^® program to CalRecycle on April 2, 2012, and a revised version based on feedback from CalRecycle on June 4, 2012.  

The California PaintCare^® program is intended to significantly increase post-consumer architectural paint collection sites and recycling opportunities for residents, small businesses and other generators of post-consumer architectural paint, while providing substantial cost savings to municipal household hazardous waste collection programs.

The comprehensive plan, which covers everything from PaintCare^®’s operational organization, to program products, collection infrastructure, budget, and education and outreach, follows the statute that mandated the paint stewardship program. Eighty-five manufacturers have registered for California, with more responding each week. PaintCare^® has identified more than 500 municipal paint collection sites and events, and has started the process to partner and contract with the agencies that manage these programs. PaintCare^® has also identified more than 2,700 paint retailers and 1,000 contractors. Outreach to both of these groups began in April.

In September 2010, Governor Schwarzenegger signed Assembly Bill 1343, creating the California Architectural Paint Stewardship Program. The statute requires architectural paint manufacturers to develop and implement a program to reduce, reuse, recycle and properly manage post-consumer architectural paint in the State. ACA created PaintCare^®, a 501(C)(3) organization whose sole purpose is to ensure effective operation and efficient administration of paint stewardship programs on behalf of all architectural paint manufacturers in the United States. PaintCare^® undertakes the responsibility for ensuring an environmentally sound and cost-effective program by developing and implementing strategies to reduce the generation of post-consumer architectural paint; promoting the reuse of post-consumer architectural paint; and providing for the collection, transport, and processing of post-consumer architectural paint using the hierarchy of reduce, reuse, recycle, and proper disposal.

This model solution was developed as part of an agreement with federal, state, and local government stakeholders. Oregon was the first state to adopt ACA's model paint stewardship in 2009. California was the second state, Connecticut the third in June 2011, and Rhode Island became the fourth just last month.

In order to put the PaintCare^® program in place in California, CalRecycle had to go through a regulatory rulemaking to clarify the statute for items including stewardship plan approval criteria; a process for CalRecycle to accept payment for its services related to oversight and enforcement activities; the establishment of a progressive enforcement approach; and criteria for acceptance of annual reports.  Unfortunately, the regulations went far beyond the statute and would be difficult and costly at best for PaintCare^® to implement.  Thus, litigation on the regulations may be forthcoming; however, this will not interfere with PaintCare^®’s ability to put the program in place in California, since the program will be based on the above mentioned approved program plan.

Contact ACA’s This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or PaintCare^®’s This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for more information.