giving paint a newlife...

I love my job.

I get to meet some really interesting people and specify some fantastic stuff to create some brilliant spaces. Wednesday was no exception as I had a mid week jaunt to the base of a very interesting paint company.

Many of you would have seen me (or heard me) talking about organic, low VOC, natural etc paint, but I have never talked about, or indeed found, recycled paint.

Not quite an alien concept as it sounds, there are groups which collect the waste remnants of paint that have been taken to recycling points at refuse collection sites across the UK and pass them onto charities through various community repaint projects.

But even with these sterling efforts, approximately 50 million litres of paint end up in landfill every year.

Step in Newlife paints.

They take all the recycled paints in (via the aforementioned recycling points), stack the cans into colour batches, then remix them in large blue containers to create a whole new batch of paint. This is then filtered, processed and repackaged for use as brand new paint.

As well as their standard 20 colours, they are also able to colour match paint to the customers requirements - all using paint which would otherwise be festering in landfill.

We think they are doing a sterling job with a real problem waste product - this really is upcycling at its best!

go check them out here...

STOP PRESS....... Just heard from Amy that Newlife Paints were awarded the Best Recycled Product 2010 at yesterdays National Recycling Awards - Well done Newlife!