PaintCare was made for you and me

When I was in middle school I decided it was time to ditch my blue and white stripped wall paper and repaint my whole room. With the help of a friend and some early 2000's pop music I began the journey for a more modernly designed bedroom. I of course wanted an accent wall my hours of HGTV were finally paying off with a deep eggplant purple and lighter almost sun kissed purple.

With wall paper stripped and walls primed, we began to paint. First the deep purple, since that would take several dozen coats to get just right. Then we moved on to the light purple. But, to my absolute horror, it was the worst color I had ever seen in a cat just puked up the flowers it ate kind of way.

One trip to Home Depot later and we had found a color I later dubbed: sophisticated peanut butter to match the purple jelly wall of course and that was that.

Fast forward 8 years.

I am searching through my parents garage for my mom when I happen upon puke-purple-flower paint. It had been sitting there since I decided sophisticated peanut butter and jelly was oh so 2003.

"MOM! Why do you still have this PAINT?" 
"I don't know what to DO with it!"

It's been 14 years since I painted my childhood bedroom and I guarantee my perfectly-awful-purple is still in my parents garage.

What do you do with old paint?

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that every homeowner in the US has 3 to 4 gallons of leftover paints in their home, and 10 percent of those paints ends up in landfills. That's a LOT of paint! Paint is classified as hazardous waste because of the volatile organic chemicals (VOC's) in it. That's what gives paint its 'paint' smell. And why you should always open the windows!

This month I took a tour of a paint recycling facility in Sacramento, CA. At Visions Paint Recycling, they collect latex paint, sort it by color and then make new paint colors!

The paint colors they make aren't always consistent or attractive, I see you puke purple! so they sell mostly to industrial or commercial customers. They do have two lines of consumer paints.

Visions is a drop off location that also partners with PaintCare, the big wig in paint recycling. PaintCare partners with local hardware stores to collect paint in several states. They then arrange to have it delivered to recycling facilities like Visions. PaintCare is responsible for most paint recycling marketing in the United States. They're also hilarious! At trade shows they walk around in a big paint can costume. 

After drop off, the paint is sorted by general color these guys are experts at ROY G BIV. They also check to make sure no oil paint has snuck into the loads. Unfortunately oil based paints can't be recycled due to their chemical properties. Oil paints are filled with saw dust to dry them out, then disposed of unfortunately to a haz waste landfill. 

Once sorted the paint is opened all at once by workers. The workers at Visions are mostly handicapped persons coordinated by a social work organization or previously incarcerated folks. 

The next step is by far the coolest. All the paint of similar colors is dumped into giant vats! All the colors! 

The paint then gets mixed so that it is all the same color. Much like the shaker at your local paint store. 

Visions is always looking for new uses for their paints. Their latest is colored concrete. They started with car bumpers because they are small in size. The paint didn't stand up well the first time. They showed us the second versions. I wish them luck in the concrete car bumper business! 

Most people are like my Mom: knowing paint shouldn't go in the garbage, but also not knowing what to do about it. For me, it all comes back to recycling's biggest pitfall: marketing. PaintCare blitz's its partner states with messages of how to recycle paint. They are steadily growing and getting recognized more and more in the resource recovery scene. They partner with municipalities in California so that hazardous waste collection facilities can add paint to their repertoire of nasty household chemicals they accept.

In some States the receipt you get from Home Depot lists a tax on hazardous waste disposal and to bring your paint back to be recycled. I've even heard of some hardware stores and thrift shops who will take paint and resell it to folks long live the sharing economy. 

The confusion over how, when and what to recycle all the products in your home can be cumbersome. PaintCare is full steam ahead on their mission to get paint out of landfills. But, if they want everyone from Prius driving Californian's to middle-class DIYers like my Mom in New Jersey to get the message, they still have some work to do.

Unlike a lot of other recycling waste streams, at least PaintCare does the guess work for you. If you need a place to drop off paint, take a gander at their website. In their words, it's not worth blowing out your pants:

Till next time trashers!



I was not paid to endorse or advertise any of the above organizations or companies. 

Saguaro the Cacti says...

...only you can prevent littering.

This is the best license plate ever. Why? Do I even need to tell you?

I love cacti and I love trash. And this is just the best of all worlds.

I want one. For California, of course.

Moving, MRF's and Multi-family

I'm back! After my trashiest summer yet, I am ready to dive back into the world of blogging and trash-u-cation!

So where have I been? and what have I been doing? Glad you asked faithful readers...

I learned! I networked! I read! I watched! And...

I moved! It was the least exciting thing I did but has proved to be the most trash-u-cational...

Moving is hard, everyone knows that. Doing it while also keeping your waste in check is actually a lot easier then I thought it would be. I snagged some boxes from work, packed a lot of my breakables in my linens to cut down on packaging, got a new counter top compost bin and have gotten all of my furniture from thrift stores, craigslist and curbside, which I am mighty proud of and so would Macklemore.

But it wasn't until I was ready to bring my moving boxes down to the recycling bin that I realized the most disheartening thing about my new home: my building DOESN'T HAVE A RECYCLING BIN. I was shocked to learn that the single dumpster is the only receptacle available to me and the 16 other units in my building. Our private waste hauler won't name names but it's shares a name with a city in Greece...brings all of our waste to a "Dirty" Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) where they hand sort out the trash from the recyclables.

...Wait, to a what and a who now? A MRF (rhymes with smurf) is where recyclables (and sometimes trash) are sent to be hand sorted by laborers. Most MRF's only accept single stream recyclables (paper, glass, cans, plastic all in one bin) and have a good system for sorting and recovering recyclables. Although jury is still out on if single stream recycling is the ultimate solution. Here's a nifty video to explain what a MRF is:

MRF's that also accept trash in addition to recycling, "Dirty MRF's," as they're referred to in the biz, are not nearly as efficient as the MRF in the video. It is much harder to separate trash from the recycling without having a contaminated recycling stream. What they do recover is often low quality and not valuable on the recycling market.

I was devastated. I was going to become a Dirty MRF-er. The idea of throwing away my food scraps and recyclables into a dumpster was so overwhelming that the recycling in my apartment took over the entire dinning area. Boyfriend was not pleased...

But then the week after we moved in I noticed an extraordinary site...I feel a #TrashGirlSolution coming on...I now live next to a fire house yea, didn't realize that when we signed the lease who does put out their blue recycling bins and green lawn bins each week.

It's a trash Rainbow! 

So I've been sneaking all the recycling and compost into their bins. The first time I did it, I didn't realize what day they put them out, so I was 20 minutes late to work because I ran 4 trips of recycling and 1 trip of compost down to the bins one morning...I know. It's a bit much. 

I know that most people and all of the folks in my building will not have the commitment or motivation to recycle and compost like I do. I'm working on a proposal to bring to my landlord to get rid of the dumpster and get a more sustainable solution to the residents of my new home. Multi-family recycling (residents with more than 4 units) in Los Angeles have to sign up for recycling services from the city but it's free so I think he'll go for it. I'm hoping a good ole' grass root effort will purge at least this complex of its addiction to the dumpster. Stay tuned...

Knowing where your trash goes is important. Communities and municipalities that have curbside recycling programs work better and recycle more than communities who don't. They not only are more cost effective but promote more consumer buy in and get people thinking about their waste. Know what services are available to you so you can conveniently recycle, compost and reduce your landfill trash. Or, check out the trash bin rainbow at your local firehouse.  

***

Open letter to the fire station next door:
Dear Fire House,
The thought of throwing away recyclables and compost-able organics in my apartment complex's dumpster makes me hyperventilate. Thank you for being so diligent about your recycling and yard waste and providing my refuse with a refuge. And not catching me using your bins yet..or ever..or if you do catch me letting me continue using your bins because it's adorable how obsessed I am with trash and I care too much for you to not let me do it. And, as invested as we both are in our civic duty you will relate to me on some level. I hope. Please. Thank you. 
Sincerely,
Your neighborhood Trash Girl

***

#DownWithDirtyMRFs !

TerraCycle Part IV: Legacy & Letting Go

I'm back! Did ya miss me? Still settling in to ma new digs and West Coast life- a whole new city of Trash to explore! Been here about a month, but I'm back from the hiatus! As promised, here is the last installment of the TerraCycle series! 

All good things must come to an end, even a fabulously witty blog post series such as this one. College also must eventually come to an end, for most of us at least. With the daunting feeling of "Life After College" approaching, I knew I would have to decide what would become of "my baby."

In college, it's hard to think of the long game when the experience has a deadline. After TerraCycle really started becoming successful and my ego was sufficiently stroked as to how well it was going, I started making plans to set it in motion for success after my graduation. For one, the norming process I talk about in Part I, never stops. New people enter college every year and a successful program sufficiently ushers them into the culture you've created. One way we did this was by this really cool commercial that was made for the campus TV Station. But it's also about leadership. I didn't want to just hand the job onto the next Hillel person who was there, I wanted them to want to own the project even if they weren't as invested in Trash as I was and let's face it, no one was going to be as into Trash as I was. 

But I was surprised at how the mini army had taken ownership of the project and even though TerraCycle was "my baby," it was their baby too. People who had been elbow deep in it with me from the beginning were just as invested as I was in the mission and impact the program was having. Programs are only as strong as the people in them and that is exactly who I was leaving TerraCycle in the hands of. (Now I heard whispers that the program got dropped a little, as expected. But I met the current girl from Hillel who is heading the project and it seems to be in good hands). 

Implementing a successful program is hard. Letting go is harder. But any program is only as successful as the people in it. All the trash warriors and partnerships we created are the reason I left TerraCycle at Virginia Tech feeling like I did something that worked. Now, like any project, I always feel like I could have done more, but after writing this series, I realize how much was done, by students, in such a short time. Hashtag Satisfied. 

By the time I graduated, we had diverted over 20,000 items from the landfill in three and a half years, resulting in about $200 raised for our service trip to New Orleans. Not too shabby for a project inspired by a banana bar.


Things we were collecting: cookie, candy, & energy bar wrappers, chip bags, solo cups, dairy containers

TerraCycle Part III: Speaking of Solo...

Now, not that Solo really promoted more healthy activities then consuming an exorbitant amount of junk food, it did present a unique opportunity to access a bigger student population and catapult our program to new heights.

Now I know this may come as a shock to some of you but, college kids LOVE to drink from plastic cups. Dum dum dum! Between late night get together's and football tailgate parties, Solo Cups quickly became our most profitable brigade. It also presented a whole new challenge of collecting, storing and shipping. Up until this point, we were only sending in TC boxes once a semester. However, plastic cups were bulky and therefore harder to store for long periods, and smelled like, really smelled, so we were sending boxes weekly.

Collecting took about a semester to be in full swing and had a two part system. First, when we heard of a party or tailgate we would talk to the host about setting up garbage bags or coordinate a pick up in the morning after clean up (in some instances we even offered to assist with the clean up).

Signs to advertise at parties to recycle cups

Second, after procuring gloves, heavy duty garbage bags and trash grabbers, we would walk around apartment complexes and pick up the cups from yards. It was quiet a sight, people thought we were doing community service. We scouted out the best complexes and learned the clean up schedule so we could collect before the grounds crews went out. In one case, we talked to the crew and they collected for us! The hardest part was recruiting folks to wake up on a Saturday or Sunday to come out and collect there's something relaxing about being up before everyone else and just hanging out with the Trash...

We were collecting enough cups each weekend that we were sending out shipments weekly. Luckily, my apartment had a porch that we could store/pack them up on. I'd like to take a moment to graciously thank my college roommates for allowing me to store thousands of used, stale beer filled cups on our porch for a better part of a year. Without your undying support of becoming the Trashiest Trash Girl I could possibly be, I would never have gotten to this point in my life...It is amazing what you can accomplish with heavy duty cleaning gloves a strong stomach.

Our sizable porch made it easy to store and pack the cups for shipment

The second year of the Solo Cup adventure, the project outgrew our porch and we got new neighbors who didn't feel so keen on the smell so we had to implement a new storage strategy:

Keeping the cans at the new Hillel Building made it easier for others to drop off cups, and allowed for an easier transition for the next Trashster to take over.

Like all projects, Solo Cup mania hit a few bumps. As students, it is really hard to wake up on Saturday/Sunday mornings, and even harder to recruit people to do it Sundays are a big sleep & homework day. But even so, by the time I graduated, we had collected almost 10,000 solo cups in 4 semesters. Like any good project, I think the success of our the Solo Cups in particular was due to understanding our audience and knowing what "resources" we had to work with.

Things we were collecting: cookie, candy, chip, energy bar, solo cups

Look for the last installment of the TerraCycle series: Legacy & Letting Go

Sadly Solo

You know you have a trash problem when your friends send you things like this on a regular basis...

Look out in the next week for the first in a series of blog posts on how we diverted over 10,000 solo cups from a landfill!

Billions of Beads

One of my favorite city's is New Orleans. After going on three separate occasions in one year not once for Mardi Gras! and collecting my fair share of beads, no, I didn't "earn" them, I didn't know what to do with the beads once I got home. With the estimated amount of beads thrown each year in the millions, I'm sure I'm not the only one at a loss for what to do with little metallic, plastic strings. Wearing them out in Virginia didn't exactly carry the same charm or status as it did in NOLA. And me, Trash Queen Extraordinaire was definitely not going to ditch them. They hung on my lamp post for a year or two until they finally ended up in a bag in my closet. I was fooling around on Pintrest one day when I saw this incredible DIY art project with the beads glued in patterns and pictures. Genius!

New Orleans has these old, beautiful, iconic, oak trees lining the streets. While I was there, our bus driver told us that on St. Charles Ave, one of the main Mardi Gras parade routes, the floats can only be as high as the lowest tree limbs. The city will not cut the trees to accommodate the floats. If the float doesn't fit, it has to exit the parade. How AMAZING is that? A city so invested in it's trees and character that it refuses to budge for their biggest tourist attraction! But, I digress...the other cool thing about a post-Mardi Gras visit is that there is still a sweet mist of Carnival in the air. All of the trees have beads hanging from them as if they really do grow the beads. Combining the iconic trees, the image of beads hanging from them like tinsel and my newly inspired DIY, I came up with my own New Orleans bead art. Not only did it come out pretty great, but it also prevented me from throwing away my 10+ pounds of beads. 

Ta-da! 

While it looks pretty swanky, it's not as good as this guys...

Check out more of Stephen Wagner's work here. He collects and individually glues each bead in place. 

And if art isn't your thing. There's this incredible non-profit called the Arc of Greater New Orleans that teaches vocational skills and provides jobs for mentally disabled folks by collecting, sorting and re-selling Mardi Gras beads wholesale. Last year they reported recycling over 120,000 pounds of beads! The plastic beads are covered in a metallic paint that prevent normal recycling from being an option. Arc resells the old beads at $1/pound.

An innovative, socially conscious, community building organization that lessens trash entering a landfill and creates jobs? Nothing could be better! One more reason to love my Big Easy....now I want a beinget! 

#TrashGirlProblem

The maintenance people in my office look at me like I'm crazy when I repeatedly ask if we have single stream waste pick up since they put all the trash and recycling in the same bag. Then they laugh when I say I'll take it home to recycle it...this has been going on for a year.