As temperatures rise and the days grow longer, people across the UK are dusting off the cobwebs and sprucing up their homes and gardens. Spring is finally here, and with it comes the annual clearout – out with the old, in with the new, and a lick of fresh paint to boot.
But how can eco-conscious decorators limit the impact of inevitable DIY waste?
The average household in the UK produces more than a tonne of waste every year, equating to nearly 31m tonnes annually. Much of that ends up in landfill, yet there are a variety of ways to curb that figure, including schemes and opportunities that put your DIY waste to good use.
Paint
Community RePaint is a nationwide scheme aiming to reuse and recycle leftover paint. Launched over 20 years ago with support from AkzoNobel, the creators of a number of well-known paint brands including Dulux, the scheme currently has over 70 centres across the country. Here, your leftover paint is redistributed for purchase at a reduced cost to communities, projects, and individuals.
Community RePaint has collected and reused 3m litres of paint since 2007. It’s a necessary service: AkzoNobel estimate that a million litres of decorative paint are thrown out every week in the UK. Much of that will either be incinerated or end up in landfill.
“We take leftover paint out of the waste stream and get it into the hands of somebody who needs it - that’s someone who probably couldn’t afford to decorate without it,” says Susan Kendall, sustainability director, AkzoNobel. “We’ve got a bold ambition that by 2020 we’ll get to over 90 centres nationwide.”
The scheme is also an “innovator in remanufacturing paint”. But what is remanufactured paint?
“For many years Community Repaint collected old, part-filled cans of paint and simply handed them out,” says David Cornish, global sustainability manager, AkzoNobel. He explains that while redistributing old paint is valuable, for large projects you need several cans, ideally of the same colour. However, there are technical and regulatory reasons why you can’t just mix various paints together to make full cans.
With this in mind, AkzoNobel worked with start up entrepreneur Keith Harrison of Newlife Paints Ltd to develop a chemical treatment process that allows waste paint to be mixed together to create a “new”, remanufactured paint. This is ideal for people needing several cans for larger projects, and the scheme hopes that by offering this service more paint will be reused.
“We set up the first two remanufacturing centres last year,” explains Cornish. “They make around 200 litres a day but we could easily double that and are working all the time to improve the process. We are hoping that Community Repaint will sell over 100,000 litres of remanufactured paint this year.”
To donate your paint, or to buy remanufactured or recycled paint click here.
Plant pots
The pot-to-product scheme recycles old or unused plant pots and turns them into new products for homes and community gardens. Plant pots are rarely accepted by mainstream, council-run recycling schemes. Perhaps because of this, pot-to-product estimates that there are a whopping 5m unused plant pots lurking in sheds across the country.
From birdfeeders to house signs, plant pots are made into a variety of objects and are available to buy through participating garden centres and nurseries. You can donate your old plant pots at these centres.
Lightbulbs
Whereas a user would normally pay into a vending machine to receive an item, the lightbulb recycling reverse vending machine pays you for depositing your old lightbulbs. Users can visit the machine in selected sites including some branches of IKEA (Glasgow and West Thurrock, for example) and receive a voucher entitling them to a reward which they can also donate to charity.
The machine accepts all standard domestic lightbulbs, whether old phased out incandescent or compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFL). CFLs contain small amounts of mercury which should not be released into the environment. The reverse vending machine contains a mercury extractor filter to capture any released fumes.
Tools
Southampton-based Tools for Self-Reliance is a UK charity working to relieve poverty in Africa by helping local communities set up sustainable, robust businesses in the building trades. The programme offers both tools and training on everything from budget-management to bricklaying.
The scheme runs in countries such as Ghana and Malawi and has helped over 4,000 people in the last 12 months. To facilitate these programs, Tools for Self-Reliance accepts donations of time, money or tools, namely power tools, that you might find buried away in your shed.
Furniture
Tackling material poverty and helping to alleviate climate change is the remit of the Furniture Reuse Network (FRN), a national body working with re-use organisations across the UK to divert furniture and white goods from landfill. FRN estimates that over 10m household goods are sent to landfill each year, three million of which could be reused. So they work with over 200 organisations and projects – from small charities to councils and large social enterprises, to redistribute these goods.
