 When you buy 1 to 20 litres of architectural or decorative paint in Australia now you’ll be paying an in-built levy of 15 cents per litre. This levy charge funds the non-for-profit company Paintback Ltd. As from 1st May 2016 Paintback became responsible for the safe disposal of waste paint and paint tins. Disposal use to be the responsibility of State and Territory Governments but under their schemes only half of all waste paint was disposed of responsibility, which meant an awful lot of paint ended up in landfill and other non-legit locations.
Waste paint that's dumped in unauthorised locations, like many other toxic substances; contaminates the soil, has a high chance of entering our waterways, and is detrimental to the health of our native flora and fauna, and ultimately our health. Paintback will collect waste paint from paint drop-off locations around Australia and will dispose of it appropriately. In Ballarat our drop-off location is the Transfer Station on Gillies Street South. Paintback also plan to do a whole heap of other work. They’ll be increasing the number of drop off locations so there’ll be a drop-off location within a reasonable distance to 85% of Australians. Setting up more drop-off locations and establishing mobile pick-up points will achieve this. They’ll run educational campaigns, research new ways to repurpose waste paint, and also fund research so they can find better uses for waste paint. They will continue to work collaboratively between industry and government, and will welcome new companies to join them. The development of Paintback Ltd didn’t happen over night. It came about after a lot of planning and collaboration between industry and Government. Paintback is a Paint Stewardship Scheme and is supported by the Federal Environment Minister under the Product Stewardship Act 2011. This Act is designed to help reduce waste and to prevent toxic substances ending up in landfill, while also increasing recycling and the recovery of valuable materials from products. Lets hope more industries develop such schemes to close the loop, and that consumers support them. So...your role in all this? Don’t dump paint in the bin. Make sure you take your waste paints to the Transfer Stations for appropriate disposal. This is the link to the Paintback website. They also include a few other products in their scheme so be sure to familiarise yourself with these and pass the word around your network. (information sources used in this post are here, here, and here)
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