Recycled, Eco-Friendly Paint

Whenever we can, we like to celebrate and share local businesses that are doing good for our community. Businesses like GreenSheen Paint.

With its brilliant recycling system, GreenSheen Paint keeps old paint out of landfills and puts inexpensive, good-quality paint on the shelves. A small business that started out of a garage in 2010, GreenSheen Paint has since grown to be a leader in the latex paint recycling industry. The company has recycling facilities in Washington, Colorado, and Arizona, and its recycled paint is sold throughout the country.

It’s always difficult to dispose of leftover paint after a remodel or house project—but GreenSheen makes that process easy, and they help the environment while doing so. 

Why Paint Recycling Matters

Each year, about 10% of the paint sold in the United States (more than 60 million gallons) is thrown away or left in storage. The difficulty of properly disposing leftover of that paint exacerbates this problem. Landfills don’t accept liquid paint, so rather than wait for it to dry, many people turn to illegal and harmful methods: dumping paint in storm drains or directly into the ground, where it wreaks havoc on the environment.

Recycling paint instead would not only (1) keep it out of landfills, but also (2) reduce the amount of minerals and chemicals needed to manufacture new paint and (3) lessen the other environmental costs associated with producing new paint such as energy, water, and transportation-related fossil fuel emissions.

Enter GreenSheen Paint.

Recycling Process

GreenSheen accepts latex paints and latex stains and uses their own proprietary process to refine it into ready-to-use, recycled paint. They charge a disposal fee for this service, although that fee is significantly less than the normal cost to dispose of hazardous waste. So a painter saves money by getting rid of their unwanted paint via GreenSheen, GreenSheen gets paid to recycle the paint, and the next painter saves money by buying GreenSheen’s product, which is subsidized by the disposal fees and thus sold at a low cost. Everyone wins.

GreenSheen takes in millions of gallons of unwanted paint through this system. They accept paint from city governments, contractors, PaintCare, and the general public. Here in Washington, they operate a recycling facility in Kent (open Monday to Friday, 7:30 a.m to 4:00 p.m.). They also accept paint through more than thirty paint drop-off locations in western Washington to make recycling even simpler.

The Paint

GreenSheen Paint produces premium latex paint for residential and commercial use. Their paint goes on smoothly, provides excellent coverage, looks great, and comes with a 5-year warranty against defects. Also, because they make money through disposal fees, GreenSheen is able to sell their recycled paint at much lower prices than their competitors.

The paint comes in 18 pre-tinted colors, and custom colors are available for large-quantity orders. GreenSheen Paint is sold in 1 gallon cans, 5 gallon pails, 55 gallon drums, and 275 gallon totes at more than 200 retail stores across the country, including Ace Hardware, True Value and United Hardware. Many Habitat for Humanity locations carry GreenSheen Paint, as well.

GreenSheen’s History

The son of a painting contractor, Kevin Callahan grew up around paint. By the time he was a teenager, he was running professional painting crews—but after 20 years as a commercial and residential painting contractor himself, he devised a bolder plan.

Kevin regularly dealt with large quantities of leftover paint, so he designed a filtration system to reduce that waste. Working in his garage, Kevin started filtering his leftover paint, then pouring the result into 55-gallon drums by color. Once he filled a drum completely, he repackaged it into buckets and sold the buckets on Craigslist. That system would become the core of GreenSheen Paint.

In 2010, Kevin Callahan partnered with Jeff Hyatt to found the company that has since grown to become a leader in latex paint recycling. GreenSheen Paint currently operates recycling facilities in Kent, Denver, and Phoenix, and their recycled paint is available for sale nationwide.

In Kevin’s own words: “When I started GreenSheen Paint in 2010 with my partner Jeff Hyatt, we knew that we could only succeed if contractors and homeowners liked our paint so much that they bought it again and again. Today, with hundreds of thousands of gallons of our recycled paint being sold every year at nearly 200 retail locations across the country, the question has been answered. The quality of GreenSheen Paint has been proven by nearly a decade of use in commercial and residential applications.”

We only recently discovered GreenSheen Paint, and we’re thrilled to know that they’re growing and thriving. As an eco-friendly business dedicated to making a cleaner planet, it’s a company we’re proud to recommend.