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The Paint Industry Works toward a

Nationally Coordinated System for Post-Consumer Paint Management

With the wide range of paint products, from hundreds of colors to paints formulated for specific uses, today’s consumer paints offer the aesthetic value that consumers seek for their individual projects, as well as the protective properties necessary to safeguard their valuable assets. Additionally, environmental consciousness has pushed coatings technology toward creating more environmentally friendly products. The results are safer and easier to use paints that deliver top quality application. While paint is manufactured to be fully used, in the aftermath of a painting project, it is not uncommon to find unopened and partially used cans of paint in garages, basements, sheds and attics. This postconsumer paint raises a question, What to do with Leftover or Post-Consumer Paint? This Issue Backgrounder focuses on the National Paint & Coatings Association’s (NPCA) efforts with industry to address post-consumer paint management and the issues that surround it, including a new leadership role the association has undertaken as part of the Paint Product Stewardship Initiative.

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Paint is reported as the largest volume waste collected by metropolitan household hazardous waste (HHW) programs, much of which is latex, though research has demonstrated that latex paint is not a hazardous waste and latex paints are considered “non-hazardous” according to u.S. Environmental Protection Agency testing protocols. Nonetheless, managing leftover latex paints as hazardous wastes, as many HHW programs do, ends up being very costly to states and local municipalities. In addition, management of latex paint poses a challenge for many municipalities and counties because liquid latex paint cannot be disposed of as mixed municipal solid waste. As such, the paint industry favors not regarding leftover paint as waste, but rather, as a resource that is meant to be completely...