Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire How do you dispose of paint?

I don't enjoy painting, but my wife does, and she goes on a painting spree every few years. She has become a pretty skilled interior room painter. Her brush strokes used to be pretty short, and she'd work it until she left lots of bristle marks in the finished product. No more. She does a nice job. She even painted our brick fireplace (against my wishes, but that's the way it goes), and it looks good except that she says it's green and I say it's blue.

Anyway, when the job is finished I'm the one who has do deal with the partially filled paint cans. She said last night, "Get rid of those empty paint cans." Of course, there are about a dozen, and none are empty. Half are more than half full. The rest have a quart or less.

So here's the question. What do you do with that much old latex paint? Will it burn? Do I put it in my garbage and pretend I don't know there's paint in there? Do I let it harden and then put it in with my garbage?

Help, please.

Thanks.
Steve.

Here the city wants you to take off the lid, let it dry out, then throw it in the garbage (once dry). I normally use mine up, so haven't had to do that.

You can buy waste paint hardener, but I'm now sure how economically feasible that is if you're talking lots and lots of cans.

We have paint recycling here now and are able to take back unused portions of cans to suppliers. You didn't have to buy it there either.

Other than that, open and let dry and toss or if you can't wait fill it with kitty litter and toss.

Fill with cat litter with the top off, when hard throw out in the garbage. That is for Latex paint only.

Latex can just left open until it drys solid and thrown away. In my part of the country you can take paint to a recycling centre and they will take it off your hands for free.

I throw it in a trash can.

Preferably somebody else's as they consume a fair amount of space.




Dave

Our local transfer station accepts it for free.

Thats how I roll too. What a concept.

Yes as above have said, just dry it to a solid and trash it.
This works for both water and oil based paints.

If you have a large amount, line a kiddy pool with some plastic sheeting, and pour in the paint. It will dry faster being in a thinner layer. When dry, wrap up the plastic and dispose.

Mix with diesel and use on your burn pile.

Or use newspaper. Cheaper, dries quicker and you are not adding plastic sheeting to the trash pile.

around here, the County has a depot you can take paint and other chemicals to for disposal.

You could use it up painting white man graffiti around the neighborhood.

"Molon labe"

"God made men, Col. Colt made them equal"

"Get a job"

stuff like that...

Our bottle depot takes it.

Cat litter makes quick work of drying out Latex paint.

Not sure what colors you have, but I have taken several different darker paints, mixed them together and came out with greyish-black paint that worked great for painting hunting blinds.

Sometimes I put a can of tannerite in the bottom and seal it up careful like.

Put a little orange sticker on the can right in front of said tannerite.

Kinda fun.



Clark

I take it to the dump.

Mix it with lead, let it dry into chips and ship it to Kotzebue.