Disposal of Paint

How To Dry Out Your Non-Hazardous Paint 

Liquid paint is banned from landfill and therefore cannot be accepted by the council in this state - you'll need to wait for the paint to harden before you can dispose of the can of paint. 

To speed up the hardening process for larger amounts of paint, add some sawdust, soil or sand to the cans and leave it to solidify. For smaller amounts, pour the paint onto card or paper and leave it to dry before including it with your general household waste. 

Once the paint is hard, you can take the can to your local Household Recycling Centre or place the can in your grey bin to be disposed of appropriately. 

Hazardous paint must be disposed of at the Household Recycling Centre. 

Introduction of Paint Re-Use Scheme

Did you know that an estimated 50 million litres of the 320 million litres of paint sold in the UK each year go to waste? This leftover paint is either thrown away or stored in homes or garages despite over 50% of it still being usable.

 As well as being incredibly wasteful and harmful to the environment, paint disposal is very costly.  Ards and North Down Borough Council has introduced a new 'Paint Re-use' scheme to help offset some of the waste and expense of getting paint treated and disposed of.

This trial scheme was launched at Newtownards Household Waste Recycling Centre in November 2021 and so far, over 640 cans, estimated at 3230 litres of paint, have been claimed by residents from this re-use scheme.

Following this successful trial, the scheme has now been extended to Comber Household Recycling Centre (June 2022).

Please speak to site attendants for more information. After filling in some details, you can then help yourself to any of the paint which you find useful. By making use of a resource which would otherwise be disposed of, you will be helping the environment and helping to reduce costs to Council and the ratepayers of the Borough.

Please note, we are not actively requesting donations of paint. 

This scheme was introduced to manage partially used pots of paint left at the HRCs and to help reduce disposal costs because liquid paint cannot be sent to landfill. If residents have large quantities of useable paint, we would also encourage that they consider using platforms such as Gumtree or Freecycle.