Paint waste disposal in Chicago and Jacksonville: a side-by-side look

Paint is the most common hazardous waste in the average American basement. According to the American Coatings Association, US households buy about 800 million gallons of architectural paint each year — and somewhere around 10% of that ends up unused. Multiply that by a few decades of redecorating and you get the universal phenomenon of the basement shelf full of cans labeled "kitchen 2011," "powder room 2014," and "?" Most people don't know what to do with them. Many of those people send me email.

We get questions about paint from both Chicago readers and — for reasons I will explain — quite a few Jacksonville readers. The two cities handle paint waste very differently, and the gap matters if you manage properties in both. Here is the side-by-side.

The latex versus oil-based split

Before either city's rules matter, you need to know which kind of paint you are dealing with. The split is the same everywhere:

• Latex (water-based) paint. Not legally hazardous waste in either Illinois or Florida. Dries hard, behaves like a solid. The label will list water as the carrier solvent. Most house paint sold since the late 1980s falls into this category.
• Oil-based (alkyd) paint. Solvent-based, flammable, hazardous waste in essentially every US state. Less common than it used to be — most paint manufacturers have phased it out except for trim, primers, and certain industrial finishes — but plenty of older cans are still around.

Cans almost always say which type they are. If you cannot tell from the label, the simplest test is to dip a stick in. Latex paint cleans off with water. Oil-based paint does not.

Chicago: a decent program nobody markets

Chicago's main residential resource is the Household Chemicals and Computer Recycling Facility (HCRC) on North Branch Street, which I have written about before. They accept oil-based paint in any quantity (within reason — call ahead for more than ten gallons) and they do not accept latex paint, because latex isn't hazardous. They will, however, tell you what to do with latex: harden it with kitty litter or a commercial paint hardener, leave the lid off until it dries solid, and put it in the regular trash with the can.

For contractors and small painters working in the city, the rules are different. Anyone generating paint waste as part of a commercial activity is a hazardous-waste generator and has to handle the material under RCRA, not under the HCRC's residential program. That usually means a quarterly pickup from a Chicago-area hauler — there is a handful of regional commercial waste companies that do Paint Waste Disposal Chicago services as part of a broader hazardous-waste contract. Most painters who do residential work just stockpile until they have a full pickup's worth.

Illinois does not participate in PaintCare, the manufacturer-funded program that runs in 11 states and the District of Columbia. There has been talk of a statewide bill for years. It has not moved. Until it does, Chicago will keep its current setup.

Jacksonville: a county program with longer hours

Jacksonville handles paint waste through the City of Jacksonville's Solid Waste Division — specifically, three permanent Household Hazardous Waste (HHW) drop-off centers (East, North, and West). Residents can drop off both latex and oil-based paint, although latex is technically just "encouraged" rather than required to be dropped off there. The centers are open six days a week, which is more than Chicago's HCRC.

For commercial generators in Duval County, the same RCRA rules apply as everywhere else, and there are a handful of haulers offering hazardous waste disposal Jacksonville services to contractors and small businesses. Florida has a slightly more relaxed approach to small-quantity generator paperwork than Illinois, but only slightly. The federal floor still applies.

Florida, like Illinois, is not a PaintCare state — which surprises a lot of people, because Florida has had a HHW program for decades and you would think they would have joined. The state has discussed it. Nothing yet.

The contractor question

The hardest situation we hear about is small contracting firms doing work in multiple cities. A company might paint a duplex in Avondale on Monday and a house in Riverside on Tuesday, generating waste in two states. Technically, the waste belongs to the generator (the contractor), not the property, so it travels back to the contractor's home base for disposal. Practically, a lot of small painters cross state lines and stockpile until they have enough to be worth a pickup.

This works fine until it doesn't. If a contractor lets the volume get above the very small quantity generator threshold (100 kg/month), they suddenly owe reporting and manifests to whichever state they store it in. The same is true for contractors working in places like Philadelphia, where the city has its own particular drop-off regime and a number of hazardous waste disposal Philadelphia services compete on the commercial side. The general rule for multi-city contractors: storage triggers regulation. Pick one home base, dispose of regularly, document it.

Five things to do this week

1. Walk the basement or garage shelf. Sort by latex versus oil-based.
2. Latex you can use: keep it. Latex you cannot use: harden and trash.
3. Oil-based of any volume: schedule a HHW drop-off (HCRC in Chicago, JEA drop-off centers in Jacksonville).
4. If you are a contractor, get on a quarterly pickup schedule. The per-gallon cost drops dramatically once you are on a regular route.
5. Stop buying so much paint. (Sorry. It had to be said.)

Paint is one of those waste streams where the rules and the cultural expectations don't quite line up. Most homeowners think it is more hazardous than it actually is (latex), and most contractors treat it as less regulated than it actually is (oil-based, in volume). A weekend cleanout, done correctly, is mostly a problem of sorting.