Standard Brands to Sell First Recycled Paint Product

Efforts to keep millions of buckets of old paint out of landfills and incinerators will get a big boost today when Standard Brands Paint Co. unveils the first recycled paint to be sold through national retailers.

Old paint is already routinely collected in some communities, mixed by cooperating paint companies into various shades of gray and used in low-income housing projects or to cover graffiti.

But the Torrance-based firm’s product for the first time lets ordinary U.S. homeowners buy high-quality recycled paint in a wide variety of colors at the local do-it-yourself store. And unlike most recycled goods, the paint will sell for up to 40% less than comparable paint made from virgin materials.

“We’re selling it as 10-year paint,” said James Moonly, vice president of sales and marketing at Major Paint Co., the manufacturing division of Standard Brands. “We’re very comfortable with that.”

The company already has sold more than 2 million gallons of the paint--to be marketed as “Cycle II”--to municipalities, state governments and the U.S. General Services Administration in recent years. The GSA, as part of the Clinton Administration’s emphasis on the use of recycled materials by government agencies, recently released its first specifications for recycled paint, based in part on its experience with the Major product.

“Paint is the leading edge of the recycling industry now,” said Barry N. Connell, research associate with the Waste Watch Center, a nonprofit group in Andover, Mass. “These companies are now looking at what were formerly waste paints as a source of raw materials. But they had to develop a way of sorting the different old paints out.”

One big concern is that older paints collected by community hazardous-waste efforts could contain lead or other toxics, contaminating the new recycled paint mix. Another worry has been how durable recycled paint would be.

But paint manufacturers are responding to their own needs in developing recycled paints. Major pays $600 per 55-gallon drum to send so-called sludge paint--the manufacturing waste from paint-making--to Southern California landfills, Moonly said.

Major’s recycled product is up to 12% old paint, 38% manufacturing waste and 50% virgin materials.

Marin County, using a grant from the California Integrated Waste Management Board, ran a pilot curbside collection program for used paint. The county then worked with Major to develop a marketable recycled paint, giving away 3,600 gallons of it to residents to get their feedback--which was favorable.