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Greening the Golden State
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Hello, Old Paint, continued...
"However, there are always issues involved with any product like paint
that involves chemicals," Jones states. "It has resins and solvents that
shouldn't go into municipal
waste systems." The bottom line: "Paint is a
highly manufactured product that uses very expensive non-renewable
resources, so it just makes sense to use it to its fullest extent
possible."
Reflecting this reality,
California
Assembly Bill 498, which calls for the Department of General Services
and the California Waste Management Board to promote the purchase of
Environmentally Preferable (EP) products, has prompted several paint
companies to develop recycled paints. Nonetheless the market has
considerable room to grow; according to the most recent data available,
recycled paint accounts for less than 10 percent of the paint purchased by
the state.
Jerry Noel, president of
Visions Recycling, Inc., became involved to "bring quality aspects and
some form of consistency to a remanufactured product." Five years later,
he questions that decision. "The compliance for recycled paint has
actually dropped," he says. "We expected 95 percent of our business to
come from the state. We currently sell five percent to the state. Private
industry, instead, makes up the largest percentage of our sales. We're
still waiting for the state to comply with its own mandates."
Evans Bradshaw tells a similar story. As the project manager for E-Coat
paint products at
Kelly Moore, one of the nation's ten largest paint manufacturers, he
worked with the California Integrated Waste Management Board to create
E-Coat, a recycled paint. E-Coat costs 50 percent less than the company's
standard paint. Despite this, it represents only 2 percent of Kelly
Moore's sales. Bradshaw attributes the low sales to hesitancy on the part
of government purchasers and the need to educate the public, state and
federal agencies on the attributes of recycled paint.
Heidi Sanborn, senior manager with
R3 Consulting Group, waste management specialists, and former
technical advisor to Chair Linda Moulton-Patterson of the California
Integrated Waste Management Board, agrees that consumers are biased
against recycled paint. She says that safety (consumers believe that
recycled paint is contaminated) and performance are the two factors that
make the public reluctant to use the product.
For the past three years, Sanborn was the primary consultant working on a
dialogue sponsored by the
Product Stewardship Institute, which brought together more than 60
stakeholders working to create a national standard for recycled-content
latex paint. The dialogue included paint manufacturers, recyclers,
painting contractors and federal, state and local government agencies.
To counter misperceptions about recycled paint, the group pursued an
environmental certification from
Green Seal that certifies latex paints are safe, environmentally
preferable and meet the
Master Painters Institute (MPI) performance standards. This is an
important step forward, Sanborn says. "If you are an architect, and you're
going to specify paint for your building, nine times out of ten you will
ask for an MPI certified paint."
The national Green Seal environmental standard for recycled-content latex
paint was announced on
August 9, 2006.
Manufacturers of recycled paints are currently submitting their products
for testing and approval. Gallagher says, "The Green Seal standard will be
written into the existing state contract specifications for
recycled-content paint. This is still in process and should occur by
spring 2007. We believe the standard will greatly increase the purchase of
recycled-content paint by California government."
Learn More About Recycled Paint (Or Where to Buy Recycled Paint)
http://www.ciwmb.ca.gov/ConDemo/Paint/
http://www.ciwmb.ca.gov/RCP/ProdByType.asp?SORT=RC&QRY=&CATID=0&ProductTypeID=062
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