Give your paint back

Residents of Victoria can now get rid of unwanted household paint by taking advantage of the free service, Paintback, which aims to keep paint out of the garbage and away from drains where it poses a threat to the environment.

Paintback is available to residents of Victoria and accepts all types of household paint, however, this service is not available to commercial businesses or operators.

The service accepts all water and solvent based paint, paint packaging and paint aerosols.

Other methods of getting rid of paint such as, tipping leftover paint into drains or the sewerage system pollutes waterways can kill fish and harm wildlife that live in the area. It also affects water supplies.

Unwanted paint can be dropped off at Bunnings Warehouse in Vermont South.

The paint collected is sent to the Chemsal's chemical resource recovery facility in Laverton for sorting, identification, segregation and data collection. This process identifies paint which is reused in the manufacture of Dulux fence paint. Solvent based and poor quality water based paint is used in the cement industry as an energy source.

Paintback is an initiative of Bunnings Warehouse, Blueschope Steel, Dulux, Chemsal, The Steel Can Recycling Council and Sustainability Victoria.