Date and Location:
- November 6, 2013
- Lunchetos, Millstone, NJ
Call To Order:
Joann Gemenden called the meeting to order at 10:43. Joann said the topic must be important since this is the largest meeting in a very long time. All participants at the meeting introduced themselves.
Approval of Minutes:
Minutes will be put on the web from the July 24, 2013 meeting held in Trenton. The approval of such minutes will need to attended to at the next meeting
Treasure’s Report:
Chris Sikorski provided a Treasurer’s Report. He stated $18,051.70 is the current balance as of the date of the meeting. Chris mentioned that National Bulb became our newest member and the current balance reflects their membership dues being deposited into the account.. Chris finally stated that the association will be providing one free lunch for each member at this meeting.
Paintcare Paint Recycling Legislation :
Alison Keane, Vice President of American Coating Association (ACA), which was entity that created Paintcare, provided an overview of the proposed paint recycling program. She explained ACA is an advocacy associations for the paint vendors/industries in the U.S. The ACA represent about 95% of paint manufacturers in the U.S and there is no other group like them in the U.S.
Today’s discussion is about architectural paint, the type of paint likely to be covered by the proposed paint recycling legislation. Paintcare gets involved in the recycling of the paint. Alison stated NJ’s traditionof latex paint drying is not practical and a pain in the butt and doesn’t lead to the recycling of paint.
In 2003, the ACA started to address the issue of paint recycling. This type of product stewardship program was running in Canada and helped provide the template for the legislation being adopted at the state level all around the U.S. The paint industry saw the writing on the wall that stewardship programs would be established and unless Paintcare designed and implemented the programs themselves, they may be forced to participate in and pay for programs they don’t believe in. In 2009, Paintcare formed as a nonprofit organization. Paintcare personnel operate the programs and implement them whereas ACA is still only an advocacy group, separate from Paintcare.
Alison opines that legislation is needed because voluntary participation isn’t a model that works. The mandate and regulation is needed in that they also provide a sustainable financing system to keep the program going. There is also an anti-trust element to the legislation, allowing for one company (Paintcare) to do this work on behalf of the consumers. Therefore the state agencies must enforce the program and the program must be approved by NJDEP, as part of the anti-trust exemptions elements of the legislation. Additionally, there is a annual reporting and audit requirement to make everything transparent. In the rest of the country, programs are scheduled to come online in 2014 in Maine, Minnesota, Rhode Island and Vermont. They hope 2015 for NJ if the legislation gets passed.
During implementation, Paintcare will reach out to the entities that currently do the work and Paintcare’s program will try to fit in to whatever the current situation is locally with providing funding for the handling of the covered paints. They will start with a “do no disturb” motto to try to make it work best as the program establishes itself. They will also begin working with retailers. They will fill in the gaps with retail drop-off locations. Paintcare programs have traditionally accepted latex from businesses while NJ programs have not. This is an issue we will have to work out with the counties that preclude businesses. Paintcare will even potentially pickup directly from businesses with large quantities. They anticipate working with the HHW vendors we work with in NJ, that is who they anticipate contracting with in NJ.
With respect to education, they will either do a soft or a full blown launch of the program, it is up to us. If there is a lot of pent up demand, they will do paint only events before barraging municipal programs with all the pent up paint programs.
The status of paint legislation was asked. Alison replied that there are two bills introduced, one in the Senate (Beach) S.2958 and Spencer in Assembly (A-4470). She noted that after the election, we sill have these sponsors, so we are happy about this. Senator Beach has been waiting to do this quickly. These bills will probably be heard during beginning of 2014, as opposed to during 2013 lame duck session.
Of note, in Oregon latex paint gets recycled, but we are not sure it will happen in NJ. There is some hope this program will invigorate the recycled paint market locally once established. Oil-based is always recycled and used for fuel blending. Paintcare will be looking to recycle the latex paint and would not want to incinerate it as it will seek the highest use for recycling the materials.
With respect to retailer participation, Lowes does not currently collect anything and they have a problem with the program in that they do not want to become a recycling facility. They are forced to do so in Canada but don’t participate in these programs in the U.S. Alison prefers pushing people to small paint retailers like Sherwin Williams, Benjamin Moore, Ace, etc. as opposed to the big box stores just to give them the foot traffic. Joann mentioned that outdoor storage is sometimes difficult for small stores like this. Alison says they do frequent pickups to handle these situations. Many of the ANJHHWC member’s concerns regarding the pending legislation are in response to the problems currently going on the NJ’s E-waste programs. Members asked for ACA to consider also including aerosols and marine paints in the list of covered paints, since these are generated residentially, especially down the shore. She said aerosols are likely to be added in the future and they will look into marine coatings as more east cost states come on board.
Joann thanks Alison fortraveling to our meeting and providing us with such a comprehensive update. Joann thinks our next step is to propose some modifications so we can have a unified support of a bill.
Adjournment:
The meeting was adjourned at 12:30pm