While paint containers have incorporated recycled plastic in their manufacture for many years, recycling the containers themselves has proved more problematic as it has been difficult to remove enough of the residual paint from the containers for them to be suitable for recycling.
This project recognized that a workable solution would be to devise a circular partnership which combined paint and packaging recovery and recycling.
In conjunction with paint recycling and recovery social enterprise organization Paint360, a scheme was established whereby waste paint is collected and re-engineered into new paint, while the plastic containers in which the paint was originally packed are recycled into new paint cans for the recovered paint.
The environmental impact of this process is significant. It reduces the overall impact of both the paint and its packaging through the reduction of both waste product sent to landfill and the carbon emissions associated with incineration.
In saving this packaging from incineration, a total saving of approximately 2.8 tonnes of CO2 is achieved for each tonne of plastic. Our calculations indicate that more than 5,000 tonnes annually of packaging could be recovered in this way. When taking into account the CO2 equivalent saving of a mechanical recycling process versus virgin production, this would equate to more than 14,000 tonnes of CO2 that could be saved annually.
These benefits are in addition to the savings generated from the recovery of the paint:
https://www.paint360.co.uk/_files/ugd/afccba_9b2622ec703a49b3a6fcdd0f400669e1.pdf
The success and further expansion of the scheme will deliver a significant economic advantage. It is assumed that the introduction of modulated EPR fees, which are scheduled for implementation in 2023, will mean financial penalties for packaging solutions which are not considered widely recycled.
If this forthcoming EPR were to be set in the region of £200 - £400 /tonne, with the total market for paint cans being around 15,000 tonnes and if only 50% of paint containers were recycled, we calculate a potential saving to the market of between £1.5m and £3m annually, just from the classification of the material.
In addition, the technical properties of the circular plastic obtained from the used paint containers are more suitable for paint can production than average PCR, and this allows a higher percentage to be incorporated into each container.
The recovery and recycling of the paint and the paint containers help paint companies meet demands from their customers for more sustainable solutions and give consumers greater opportunities to sustainably dispose of waste paint and used paint containers.
The project has also served as a proof of principle to facilitate the expansion of the concept.