Cans of leftover paint sit in a bin at Bend’s Standard Paint and Abbey Carpet. As part of the PaintCare program, the cans will be picked up and recycled, either as new paint or as an ingredient in concrete.

Six months after Oregon kicked off the nation’s first statewide program to recycle paint, it’s been working well for Deschutes County, said Timm Schimke, county solid waste department director.

While people previously could drop off paint to be recycled at Knott Landfill in Bend and at three or four retail stores, now there are 10 locations in Central Oregon where people can drop off their unwanted cans of paint, he said.

“It’s a much higher level of service for the citizens out there,” Schimke said. “That’s always a good thing.”

The PaintCare program started in Oregon in July, after the Legislature decided there should be a program to collect and recycle paint.

The American Coating Association had been looking at developing a program for several years, said Rick Volpel, Oregon program coordinator with PaintCare, in part because the industry forecast that more and more places would start requiring it.

“A lot of communities have started putting pressure on manufacturers to start collecting their leftover products or used products,” he said.

So the industry created the nonprofit PaintCare to administer the program, which is overseen by the DEQ and funded through a fee added to the cost of paints and stains.

The fee added to the products is set at 35 cents for containers larger than a half pint and smaller than a gallon, 75 cents for gallon containers and $1.60 for containers larger than a gallon.

More than 70 collection sites were set up statewide, where people can drop off leftover paint. PaintCare picks up the paint and takes the collected containers to a facility, where contractors sort out empty cans and leaky containers, and determine what can be recycled, Volpel said.

Where the paint goes

About half of the recyclable paint is sent to Metro, a regional government for Portland’s metropolitan area, which takes similar colors and blends them, creating a new line of paint called MetroPaint. The paint is sold in Oregon and Washington, although Metro’s website does not list any Central Oregon locations where it’s available.

“It’s been really popular,” Volpel said. “It’s a lot cheaper … but (also) there’s some people that are really committed to buying recycled paint.”

The rest of the paint is sent to a California company that uses it as a concrete ingredient, he said, adding that PaintCare is searching for other companies to recycle paint as well.

In the first three months of the program, more than 115,000 gallons of paint were collected statewide and recycled — about 4.3 percent of the amount sold during that period.

According to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality’s website, the program expects to collect up to 800,000 gallons of leftover paint a year for recycling. The state agency will complete an annual report this summer on the paint program’s progress, said Abby Boudouris, household waste coordinator with the DEQ.

It’s too early to tell how successful the program has been at recycling paint, she said, noting some collection sites were only established this fall. But getting those collection depots up and running was a big step, Boudouris said.

“There’s absolutely more convenient access to paint-collection opportunities than there was in June,” she said.

Bins fill up quickly

Rich Eldrige, manager of Standard Paint and Abbey Carpet in Bend, said his store got collection bins in October.

“Quite surprisingly, they’ve been filling up pretty quick,” Eldrige said.

Still, some customers are not happy to see the additional charge on their receipt, he said.

“There’s some that say, ‘Oh great, just one more tax, and it’s something that we didn’t even get to vote on,’” he said. “Which I can sympathize with and empathize with.”

While he may not agree with everything in the program, and questioned why Metro was selling paint that people had paid to recycle through the fee, Eldrige said Standard Paint decided to participate in the program to help out and give the community another option for recycling.

Many customers just shrug and say they’re glad the program is in place to prevent paint from ending up in the landfill, Eldrige said.

Gavin Hepp, one of the owners of Webfoot Painting Co. in Bend, said the program has been good for commercial painters because they previously had to pay for someone to pick up leftover paint.

“It’s been very convenient for recycling paint,” Hepp said. “And it’s not so bad having to pay a little more per gallon.”

People can still drop off paint at the landfill, Schimke said, which is one of the PaintCare sites. But having PaintCare run the paint collection and recycling program has allowed the county to reassign an employee who used to do that work full time, Schimke said. Between the cost of that employee, and the cost to hire a contractor to recycle the paint, the county is saving somewhere between $100,000 and $125,000 a year, he said.

“I think this has been a great program,” Schimke said.

As other states consider establishing paint-recycling programs, the federal Environmental Protection Agency also is evaluating Oregon’s efforts, Boudouris said.

“We were the first in the country, so we’re very much being watched by other states,” she said. “We’ll have a whole lot of information on how this whole thing worked.”

Recycle locations

PaintCare centers in Central Oregon include:

• Knott Landfill, 61050 S.E. 27th St., Bend

• Rodda Paint and Decor, 63007 Layton Ave., Bend

• Standard Paint and Abbey Carpet, 253 N.E. Greenwood Ave., Bend

• Mitchell Hardware, 660 N.E. Third St., Bend

• Sherwin Williams, 125 N.E. Franklin Ave., Bend

• Sherwin Williams, 2835 S.W. 17th Place, Redmond

• Redmond Habitat ReStore, 1242 S. U.S. Highway 97, Redmond

• Lutton’s Ace Hardware, 373 E. Hood Ave., Sisters

• Parr Lumber Co., 601 N. Main St., Prineville

• La Pine Ace Hardware & Building Supply, 51615 Huntington Road, La Pine