PaintCare Program Embodies Industry Commitment to Sustainability

By Cynthia Challener

When a customer buys a gallon of architectural paint, the paint manufacturer is hoping that all of that paint will be used. Unfortunately, that often is not the case, and disposing of that left­over paint results in a huge cost and resource drain for local govern_­ments. That will not be an issue any longer in Oregon, and soon will not be in California, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Oregon suc­cessfully implemented the American Coatings Association’s (ACA) PaintCare® program in July 2010. California is gearing up for its start in October of this year, and Connecticut and Rhode Island will be fol­lowing in 2013 and 2014, respectively.

PaintCare is the culmination of several years of joint efforts to identify the best solution for managing the recovery of unwanted, leftover architectural paint for reuse, recycling, energy recovery, or safe disposal. Discussions began in 2003, when the Product Stewardship Institute (PSI), which had identified post-consumer paint as a strong candidate for a recycling program, initiated a national dialogue. The “Paint Product Stewardship Initiative” (PPSI) involved representatives from the paint industry, state and local governments, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), recyclers, and retailers, among others.

In 2005, the paint industry committed to a plan for gathering additional information on ways to minimize the amount of leftover paint through consumer education, on best practices for running a collection and recycling program, and on ways to do so cost-effec­tively. By late 2007, the coatings industry, through the ACA [then the National Paint and Coatings Association (NPCA)] was ready to move forward with a program and signed a PPSI Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in anticipation of the establishment of a na­tionally coordinated system for managing post-consumer paint.

A final MOU was signed in 2008 in which the association com­mitted to implementing a pilot program in Minnesota. Unfortunately, the state’s governor did not approve the program, so the PaintCare pilot moved to Oregon. It was implemented there in July 2010 as the first-ever paint stewardship program in the United States, and has, by all accounts, been a real success.