Just realized how much paint waste I was generating after tracking it for a month

Honestly I started weighing my leftover paint cans last month after a buddy at a shop in Phoenix told me he was tracking his. Turns out I was tossing about 12 pounds of mixed paint every week that could've been reused on touch-ups or smaller jobs. Found a local recycling program that takes it but now I'm mixing smaller batches instead of guessing. Anyone else ever actually weigh what they're throwing away?

2 comments

2 Comments

faithjones13d ago

Started tracking my food waste in the kitchen around the same time and noticed I was throwing out like a third of what I bought every week. It's funny how we don't realize until we actually measure stuff. The paint thing makes me think about all the other areas where we just assume we're being efficient but really we're just blindly tossing money and materials. Small batches and better planning seem to be the answer for most of this stuff.

susan_wells13d ago

The recycling program is a good stopgap, but most places won't take paint that's been mixed into a custom color. They usually only accept full, unopened cans or certain specific base types. You might want to double check that yours actually processes blended batches, a lot of them just send it to a hazardous waste facility anyway. Have you tried those little 8oz sample cups for touch up jobs instead of mixing full quarts?