How to recycle paint with community RePaint
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Donate your paint to Community Repaint for recycling
Many of us have tins of half used paint cluttering up our garages or sheds. It’s not simply a case of pouring it down the sink to dispose of it because they can be very damaging to the environment.
According to Community RePaint, 400 million litres of paint are sold in the UK every year. It is estimated that approximately 56 million litres are unused, stored in homes or garages or just thrown away.
By connecting people who have paint to donate with the people who need them, Community RePaint provides an outlet for unwanted reusable paint while helping local communities and individuals.
Donate paint
You can donate more or less any type of household paint such as emulsion, masonry paint and varnishes and woodstains. They cannot accept car paint, aerosols & spray paints, paint over 10 years old, paint containing lead or paint that is not in its original container.
You can discover exactly what you can donate and where you can donate it with their online postcode finder.
If you’re a retailer, merchant, painter or decorator or local business and have unwanted surplus paint you would rather see reused, then get in touch with Community RePaint for further details.
Need free paint?
If you are in ‘social need’ such as those on income support, former homeless, refugees and asylum seekers then you can apply for paint too. Find out where your nearest donation point is on there ‘do you need paint‘? page.
Some recent community projects which have benefited from donations of paint from Community RePaint include:
- Crumbles Castle; an adventure playground in Islington, London.
- Leon Sparks, an artist based in the West Midlands area who painted a kick wall in a local park.
- Blackpool and Fylde College Community Programme who run a Furniture Painting Course for learners with additional needs.
- Inside Out Trust in Liverpool, where prisoners refurbish and paint wheelchairs and bicycles; which are then went by Human Appeal International for use by disadvantaged people in Iraq.
So what are you waiting for? Have a rummage through your garages and sheds and see if you can put your paint to good use!
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This is actually a VERY good idea!!
I had a barrel of paint years ago & it actually went bad!! (I didn’t know paint could go bad but it did!!)
Paint is considered ‘dangerous waste’ & collected separately & of course it doesn’t just disappear then!!
most often, as far as I know, it gets burnt in an incinerator abroad!! (at least here in Slovenia that’s the system!)
I do hope they keep tabs on how environmentally friendly & health-friendly the paints are & help educate people about these things too!! 🙂 – anyway, it’s MUCH better to use up the paint than to pour it away or get it burnt up in smoke!! 🙂
The paint in my hall and landing was made up so couldn’t really be replicated if I needed it, so I kept a half tin for patch work. When we suffered from frustrated cat syndrome (scratches all over the painted wallpaper!), we opened up the half tin and splashed it all over. Bad move! It had changed colour quite drastically 🙁
@Layla: Hi Layla, it’s a fabulous idea isn’t it? I’ve seen paint ‘go off’ too; it’s really weird!
@Poppy: Oh dear Poppy; colours change over time I guess – get grubby and fade in sunlight – sorry to hear about that. Have you repainted or are you going to live with your unique look?
@Mrs Green:
Still there! It goes very nicely with the two-tone inspiration that Master P added a few years ago!
One day, maybe, perhaps, possibly ………………. sigh!
We’ve been reblending and selling leftover paint (in over 15 colors) for over a decade. The program is very successful and the state of Oregon just adopted product stewardship requirements for paint–take back leftovers where you bought them.
@Judie: Hi Judie, welcome to the site and thanks for telling us about your recycling programme. It sounds great and the take back scheme is really innovative.