By Frank Brill, EnviroPolitics Blog Editor
Last week Washington became the eighth state to adopt a law that makes paint manufacturers responsible for the cost of collecting and recycling leftover house latex and oil paints.
“This new law will help protect the environment by making it easy for Washington residents and businesses to recycle leftover house paints that pile up in our basements, garages, and storage facilities,” said sponsor State Rep. Strom Peterson. “The program also will save money for towns and taxpayers by freeing up resources currently dedicated to processing unused paint through local household hazardous waste programs.”
The Association of New Jersey Household Hazardous Waste Coordinators (NJHHWC), which has been the lead organization pushing similar legislation in New Jersey, seized on news of the Washington State enactment. In a letter, Association president JoAnn Gemenden urged Governor Phil Murphy to endorse the ‘paint stewardship’ legislation that now is law in the eight other states.
New Jersey’s current paint bills, S2815, and A4382, offer a “vast improvement over the current disposal options of landfilling, incineration at waste-to-energy facilities, or the exorbitant expense of county household hazardous waste collection programs,” Gemenden wrote.
Angela Anderson, president of the Association of New Jersey Recyclers (ANJR) which also supports the legislation, agreed. “The beauty of the legislation is that paint manufacturers would be able to utilize a voluntary network of retailers for used-paint collection and/or New Jersey’s established system of municipal and county recycling centers, she said.
Model paint legislation, supported by the paint industry, has been enacted in Oregon, California, Colorado, Minnesota, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maine, and Vermont, as well as the District of Columbia.
In New Jersey, the legislation has been heard and released by the environmental committees in the both the Senate and Assembly and currently sit in the finance committees in both houses.
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