Project Recover 2.0: New Life from Old Paint

This project will develop circular supply chains, technologies and products to get new life from old paint. 50m litres of paint are believed to go unused each year in the UK, wasting valuable and scarce resources and clogging our landfills. A better option is to recycle and reuse it: making paint from paint. Such paint recycling businesses and processes do exist, but are in their infancy, facing technical and commercial challenges in reprocessing it efficiently and effectively and then selling it. Project Recover aims to develop technologies to more efficiently extract paint from old, used tins; identify technologies for more effective colour matching of recycled paint; and work with end-customers to design new propositions and business models that help enhance the value and perception of recycled paint. Doing this can avoid 60k tonnes of waste ending in landfill and introduce mainstream recycled paint products with a 50% lower carbon footprint than current new paint but with no loss of quality and at a competitve price.