How to recycle paint & paint cans
Ideas for responsible disposal and re-use
It can be surprising how many different types, and colours, of paint we all use when decorating our homes. Even if you’ve chosen a neutral colour scheme, you can easily find yourself with three or four different types for each surface in your home. And once you’ve completed your decorating project it’s not uncommon to have some leftover, which most of us keep handy for touching up paintwork, or to use for another project.
However, these leftovers can often stack up and are only good to use for a few years before they dry out or discolour, all the while taking up space we don’t have in our homes and garages. It’s helpful to have a few ideas to hand to make sure that they don’t go to waste if you can’t use these up yourself.
If you have unopened cans, still have the receipt and purchased less than 135 days ago, you may be able to return the paint to B&Q for an exchange or refund. Check our Returns and Refunds page for more details.
It’s important to remember that although it’s safe to use paint in our homes, it can be damaging to the environment if it isn’t disposed of in the right way. Whether your paint cans are empty or still contain paint, follow our tips below to make sure that they are dealt with in the safest possible way.
At the moment, plastic paint cans can’t widely be recycled, however your local household waste recycling centre will accept these and make sure that they’re disposed of responsibly.
At B&Q, we currently support a pilot scheme to introduce recycling for these containers, so that hopefully all plastic paint pots can be recycled in the future. If you live in Cambridgeshire or North East London your household waste recycling centre will separate these cans out for inclusion in the trial.
The good news is that these can be recycled. Simply drop off your paint cans at your nearest household recycling centre. Check with your local authority for more details.
At B&Q, we are committed to helping our customers to enjoy better, more sustainable homes – find out more about our One Planet Home® programme.