The Deets: Recycled Paint — and a Giveaway!

The Deets is a series that takes a product out on the market and provides fast details: What It Is, What It Does and Where to Get It. Today we talk about the newly released Recycled Paint by California’s Metro Wallworks.  Recycled Paint is quite unlike any other paint because it IS the other paints.  What does this mean?  Let’s find out!  Also, be sure to see the details on our Giveaway!

What It Is: Recycled Paint is unused latex paint collected from Hazardous Household Waste collection centers that is then sorted, filtered, scrubbed, tinted and remanufactured into high-quality interior and exterior latex paint.  It is comparable to top-quality new paint sold by national manufacturers. It is available in 15 pre-mixed colors and carries the Green Seal stamp of approval. The sheen for all the paints is flat except for Whipped White which is also available in Semi-Gloss.  Custom colors and other sheens are available for orders of over 100 gallons.

Recycled Paint Color Chart. These colors are readily available in one-gallon or 5-gallon containers.

What It Does: This high-quality latex paint that can be used for interior and exterior applications for any paint project.  Using Recycled Paint qualifies for LEED credits because the paint contains over 80% post-consumer content material.

In fact, to make 10 gallons of new paint takes about 1000 kWh — the equivalent of running a home for a month.

In California alone, people dispose of 5 – 7 million gallons of paint every year and the energy used to make that disposed paint would run 40,000 homes for a year!

“Our mission is to increase awareness and thus consumer demand for recycled paint, just like environmentalists did with paper, glass and plastic.  We purposely choose a very bold “recycled” on the label and kept it generic so that resellers can apply their logo in place of ours but keep the branding going.  We just want to sell a lot of paint in our neck of the woods and be a catalyst for other retailers to take this on as well,” Ayn explains.  Please note the website has a great FAQ area as well.

Where To Get It: Recycled Paint is available through Metro Wallworks but they will be announcing more distributors and locations soon. The cost? $16.95 per gallon and $65 for a 5-gallon bucket.  The 5-gallon ends up being $13 per gallon.  Seriously — you can’t beat that.

I do love their tagline "Some Things are Better with a Past". Brilliant.

Extra Tip: Ayn Riggs, owner of Metro Wallworks, added an area to the website called Decorative Artists 4 Recycled Paint.  It’s an area for studios and artists across the country to share finish recipes using recycled paint. The contributing studios are promoted on the site and visitors receive practical advice and great ideas.  Win-win!  BTW, you can find the company on Facebook and on Twitter.

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Now obviously, you can buy paint anywhere but I think that using a product such as Recycled Paint goes toward the greater good, is cost effective and clients will always appreciate an eco-forward studio.  Helping to spread the word on wonderful ideas and products such as this one is one of the joys of writing this blog!

G I V E A W A Y

One lucky Reader will receive 5 quarts in any colors you’d like to get you going on your own personal faux kit!  You can use it to create a Decorative Artists that Care finish or use it as the base of a simple job and then blast out to your clients what your studio is up to — it’s all up to you!  For your chance to win, please leave a comment on this post letting us know what you think of Recycled Paint and your creative plans for the product — you know we all love to read inspired ideas!  The Giveaway is open to everyone and one Winner will be chosen at random from the comments.  Deadline: Friday, July 22, 2011.  Good Luck!