COUNTYWIDE : Firm Gives Paint a Brush With Charity

A Camarillo company is leaving its mark on the county by donating thousands of gallons of paint to government, charitable and civic organizations.

MSE Environmental Inc., an environmental consulting and engineering firm, recycles used paint.

“We are mostly concerned with handling and getting rid of hazardous materials,” said William Dowdy, the company’s general manager. The company contracts with local governments to collect household hazardous waste.

MSE mixes multicolored, water-based paints in 50-gallon drums and sends them to a paint plant, where they are recycled into beige paint.

“No matter what colors we put in, it always comes out beige,” Dowdy said. The color might be due to additives used in recycling, he said.

MSE then gives the paint to charitable and civic organizations such as Catholic Charities of Ventura County and the Boys and Girls Club of Camarillo.

“The reason we give it away is that we’re an environmental company, not a paint company,” Dowdy said. “We don’t give it to be resold or to industrial users.”

Dowdy said the paint comes in five-gallon containers, but the company prefers to deal with large users who can take at least 1,000 gallons.

Most of the other items collected also are recycled, Dowdy said. Oil-based paints go to an alternative fuel program; oil is recycled, and the lead in car batteries is recovered. Dowdy said insecticides and pesticides cannot be recycled.

MSE, which has been in business for about five years, conducts about 12 collection days a year throughout California. It has worked for the city of Thousand Oaks and the Ventura Regional Sanitation District.