Don’t Put it Down Your Drain: Paint
If you’ve just finished painting a room in your home and have some leftover paint you don’t want to keep, or you just found a stash of half-full paint cans in your basement and want to dispose of them…DON’T pour them down the drain- any drain in your home.
Paint is highly flammable and dangerous to add to your plumbing system where its fumes can release into all parts of the house, or the paint can even ignite. Paint will coat the insides of your pipes, shrinking them down and causing materials to build up and clog your drains.
Do not throw the paint cans away or pour them into a city or storm drain either- they can easily leak or leech into the water supply or contaminate the ground. Check with your local city municipality for a safe place to dispose of paint- there are plenty of facilities that accept all types of household chemicals and paints for safe disposal or even recycling. Some hardware stores or paint stores may also have this information.
For cleaning up after painting, follow the directions on the side of the paint can. Usually, for water-based or latex paints, it’s safe to scrape as much excess paint as possible into some newspapers. Let the paint dry on the newspapers before throwing them into the garbage. Then you can wash the roller and brush with warm soapy water. With enough water running to dilute it, the paint can be washed down a drain safely.
However, oil-based or alkyd paints aren’t soluble with water and require paint thinner to clean the utensils. Follow the directions on the side of the cans for these types of paints. (Usually they instruct to soak or rinse the brushes and rollers with paint thinner into another can, seal it, then take it to a hazardous waste depot.) Also- marine or auto body paint may contain lead- so always check the labels of paints and follow their disposal directions carefully.
Also, if you have excess paint you want to dispose of but it’s still fresh enough to use, try finding someone who could use it, before disposing of it. Check with your neighbors, local businesses, colleagues at work, a church or youth group, or any place in your community where you can donate it and it can still be used to paint something!
