The Council has joined the Community RePaint network and from Monday 24 July 2023, there will be householder paint drop-off and collection points on-site at our three main Household Waste Recycling Centres, located in Cookstown, Drumcoo and Magherafelt.
Each year in the UK, an estimated 50 million litres of paint goes to waste. This paint is either thrown away or stored in homes or garages.
The Community RePaint scheme will enable residents to drop off their leftover paint at these Household Waste Recycling Centres (HWRCs) and collect reusable paint for free for household DIY and community projects.
How the scheme works
When you drop paint off at Cookstown, Drumcoo or Magherafelt recycling centre, the onsite staff will assess the paint and check whether it is in a good enough condition to be reused. If yes, your leftover paint will be placed into the onsite Community RePaint paint collection areas of these centres where residents in the area and local community groups can then collect the paint, free of charge, for DIY jobs and use in local projects.
Passing on your leftover paint for reuse through the scheme and/or collecting FREE paint for your upcoming projects from the scheme is a great way to prevent this usable paint from going to waste.
The Community RePaint network sees this leftover paint as a valuable resource and works to prevent it from going to waste by redistributing it for reuse, through their UK-wide paint reuse network, benefitting individuals, families, communities and charities in need. This leftover paint has enabled people on low income to redecorate their homes at an affordable cost while helping local groups and charities refresh shared spaces and create colourful murals for the community.
In 2022 alone, the Community RePaint network’s 72 schemes across the UK collected for reuse over 458,000 litres of leftover paint from across the UK and redistributed over 285,000 litres to brighten 189,313 lives while saving approximately 1.2 million kg of carbon emissions through paint reuse.
If you are visiting the Cookstown, Drumcoo or Magherafelt recycling centres to pick up paint for an upcoming project, before collecting any paint, you will need to sign a disclaimer and provide some details. This is to keep a record of where the paint is going, and to ensure we comply with our legal reporting requirements. Once you get home, if you are not happy with the quality of the paint you have collected, please bring it back to the HWRC for recycling.
Find out more about the Community RePaint Network.