Categories: News

Celebrate Sustainable Living Month with Community RePaint

This September is Sustainable Living Month, with the aim to encourage people to recycle more, waste less and live sustainably.

Community RePaint schemes across the UK will hold events ranging from paint sales, upcycling workshops and community mural painting.

Events at Community RePaint schemes

  • Visit the paint sale at Community RePaint Swindon between 6 and 10 September, where staff will also be available to give advice and tips about selecting the right type and colour of paint.
  • Get involved in a ‘bring and take’ event where Community RePaint East London will be giving away free paint on 17 September.
  • Community RePaint East Lancashire will be at PROSPECTS Woodland Day on 25 September. There will be a variety of activities and demonstrations throughout the day.
  • Join Community RePaint Bradford for an open day at its new premises and a chance to see mural painting in action on Friday 30 September.
  • Visit Community RePaint Torfaen at their open day on 27 September where they will have a paint amnesty for local residents and paint for sale at reduced prices.

National activity taking place in September 2017

  • Recycle Week (12-18 September) – #RecycleWeek is organised by Wrap with the theme of ‘The Unusual Suspects’ – people often don’t think about leftover paint as being of use, yet the average household is estimated to have 17 tins of paint hanging around in sheds, cupboards or garages. The aim is to let people know there is something positive they can do with any paint they have leftover.
  • Zero Waste Week (5-9 September) – #ZeroWasteWeek is a grass roots international awareness campaign aiming to reduce landfill. Our events will show people how they can make the best use of leftover paint at a low cost.
  • Waste less, Live more week (19-25 September) – #wastelesslivemore is organised by Keep Britain Tidy to encourage people to take part in activities which are good for us and good for the environment. Some of our events will show people how they can recolour their home, community space or sports club.

Community RePaint Network and Sustainble Living

The Community RePaint Network is run by Resource Futures and sponsored by Dulux, which is part of AkzoNobel. Dulux has sponsored the Community RePaint network since 1993, to bring colour into communities by reusing waste paint.

AkzoNobel’s UK Sustainability Director Susan Kendall said, “Community RePaint does vital work motivating communities to get involved in gathering and redistributing leftover paint. We look forward to continuing our partnership with them, supporting and helping grow the network to take it from strength to strength, bringing colour to more communities across the UK.”

Martin Pearse, Community RePaint Network Manager, talks about the events happening during Sustainable Living Month: “Community RePaint schemes around the UK are always looking at ways that they can help to add colour to people’s lives. Sustainable Living Month is a great opportunity to show even more people what can be achieved with a lick of paint. There will be experts on hand at many of the schemes in September to share tips and ideas about what you can do at low cost, whether that’s for your family, community group or local sports club.”

If you, your family or community group need paint, no matter how much or how little, you can get in touch with your nearest Community RePaint scheme by clicking here and entering your location.

You can also call the Community RePaint team on 0845 180 0501 for information.

Sustainable living month success

Community RePaint Swindon held a paint sale from 6 to 10 September, which coincided with Zero Waste week. During the sale 263 litres of paint were sold. You can find out more about the scheme here.

Community RePaint East London attended a ‘give and take’ event and also held a fantastic upcycling and chalk paint workshop. Around 148 people attended the ‘give and take’ at Grazebrook Primary School where the scheme gave out free tester pots to promote the great work that the Community RePaint scheme is doing. Their paint chalk workshop, where participants learnt how to make their own chalk paint for use on walls and furniture, was also a huge success.

Our schemes in Bradford and Torfaen opened up their premises to the community and sold paint at a reduced cost during their Open Days. At Bradford they were also joined by a local artist who produced a piece using their paint during the afternoon.

Community RePaint Swindon celebrates 16th Anniversary

The RePaint scheme opened to the public on Saturday 24 November 1999 and has diverted thousands of tons of paint from the waste stream. In the last year alone the scheme has diverted more than 3,600 litres of paint, which has benefited the 65 local charities and community groups and 283 individuals who have accessed the low-cost paint.  Swindon Children’s Scrapstore is a registered environmental charity, community resource centre and social enterprise set up in 1985 to benefit the local community.

Scheme manager Olivia McCann said: “Community RePaint Swindon is a simple, local solution to the problem of waste paint. By reusing paint in our community, we can bring colour to people’s lives and help to protect the planet by preventing perfectly good paint from ending up in landfill”.

The Swindon Children’s Scrapstore is located at Unit 7, Bramble Close, Elgin Industrial Estate, Swindon, SN2 8DW. Opening Times: Tuesday through to Friday 10am – 4pm and every Saturday 10am – 2pm.

You can find out more about Community RePaint Swindon on their Facebook page or website.

Community RePaint goes from strength to strength into 2017

Part of the growth can be credited to our two paint remanufacturing centres becoming fully operational in 2016. Our second remanufacturing centre launched in October 2016 on the Wirral and followed the success of the centre in Cambridgeshire, which opened in December 2015. The centres provide the perfect solution to the issue of over 50 million litres of paint being wasted, through landfill disposal or via incineration, in the UK each year. The new process allows us to increase the amount of leftover paint we can collect for reuse. The centres remanufacture the paint into new containers, providing larger quantities of consistent colours and reducing leftover paint from entering the waste stream.

Our schemes collect unwanted, surplus paint and re-distribute it to individuals, families and communities in need, improving the wellbeing of people and the appearance of places across the UK. In 2016, over 332,000 litres of paint were redistributed by the 74 schemes in the network which helped improve communities across the UK and coloured over 419,000 lives. The remanufacturing centres processed over 26,000 litres of paint, which was redistributed to their customers, other Community RePaint schemes and groups and charities in need of larger quantities of paint.

Reflecting on the year, Martin Pearse, Community RePaint Network Manager commented:

‘We are constantly working to expand and develop the network so it’s great to see our schemes achieving more and more each year. It really is a pivotal time for the network as we continue to open schemes in new areas whilst our existing schemes are gearing up to do more and more. Our remanufacturing centres offer a great boost to the whole network, making good quality affordable paint available and maximising the amount of paint we can prevent being disposed of.’