Snoop through any store—Mom’s Variety on to Home Depot—and there’s always that embarrassing stack of mistints in an obscure corner next to Two dollars a for two gallons! Take me: we pay you!

The color your customer didn’t want is now a color nobody wants. Mistints lose money, take up space, and aggravate accountants. You can try to retint it, you can pawn it off on some theater company that can’t use it either, or you can shell out up to $5 a gallon to have it disposed of according to federal, state, county and municipal regulations—all of them.

The newly created National Council on Paint Disposition (NCPD) has developed a program where donated mistints can accomplish the following:

• Put a smile on your face.
• Put a smile on a local charity.
• Save you money and square footage.
• Help you gain good standing in your community.

NCPD founder and president Marv Goodman notes that dealers who join up with his program can improve their own dispositions by putting unprofitable paint to good use. Marv himself spent 30 years as a paint dealer, never satisfied with the handling of mistints until he lit upon the idea of donating them sensibly. “We’re a not-for profit organization dedicated to finding better uses for unwanted paint from all sources,” says Marv. “We’ve developed a charities match-up program to help dealers manage the problem of mis-managing tints and discontinued paints in a win-win way—from an economic and charitable perspective plus with the opportunity for some positive public relations exposure for being a good corporate citizen.”

Essentially, you can make more money with this program than you can selling a $25 gallon of paint for $2 on the off chance someone needs “that color.”

“If a gallon of paint costs $15 and is normally sold for $24,” Goodman explains, “and the gallon is donated to an appropriate non-profit charitable organization, then in accordance with the tax code a dealer could receive a tax credit of $19.50.” (Make sure to consult your tax advisor for eligibility requirements, he recommends.)

Just like a good dating service, the NCPD’s database of more than 5,400 charities helps harmonize what these charities need with what you need to get rid of, with an eye to matching the right paint to the right charity. “Certain charities prefer only cans of white and off white, others want darker shades, some want midtones, and others want quarts,” Goodman points out. Some want latex, some want oil. (Remember oil?)

“Our database has organizations that can use all the paint being donated. With a little bit of planning and organizing we can help dealers get rid of their unwanted paint and maximize the return on their investment in our program.”

You can even pick your method of disposal, from having recipients pick it up from your store to shipping it to a centralized location and having them get it there.

Also, this program helps make sure that the charity doesn’t become as overloaded with paint as you are. Paint stores often realize their dream of clearing up floor space by dumping everything on the first group that comes to their aid. If you donate something to a dot-org that can’t use it, however, you’re just passing your problem along to the non-profit, who now may have to pay more in disposal costs than if it had just bought the paint new.

It costs $300 to join the program; $50 annually after that, but don’t get your brushes in a bunch—Marv promises it’ll save you money before you can say “gas prices.”

If your average disposal fee is $5 a gallon plus $1 shipping, you can make your money back by donating 50 gallons the first year and nine every year after that. If you’re getting $19 tax credit per gallon, then 16 gallons takes care of your initial $300. Combine the shipping with the tax credit and you’re down to 12.

Besides, there’s gallons of good-will—or quarts, depending on your charity. “What is the price a dealer can put on community goodwill and a positive reputation for giving something of value to community organizations?” asks Marv. “In my view, it’s priceless!” Three hundred advertising dollars won’t take you nearly as far as the goodwill generated by investing it in a charity match-up program.

By now you might be wondering: What happens to my $300? Is Marv pocketing it to party down with his buds at the Texas Roadhouse?

“The monies received from the subscription database list fees are being used as seed money to support this program and other approaches for disposing leftover paint and containers,” he says.

Disposing paint through a locally organized paint event, he notes, can cost about $8 a gallon. Nor is it cheap or efficient to lose your paint at a Household Hazardous Waste collection date. “A small portion of the latex paint collected in this manner is recycled, but most of the paint and the cans end up in landfills.” Why throw it out when it can all be used again?

Remarkably, what goes in the bucket can now becomethe bucket. A partnership with Rutgers University’s AMIPP Advanced Polymer Center (www.amipp.rutgers.edu/html) has developed new technologies for combining leftover latex paint with recycled plastic. The end product, which can be sold to injection molders, can be turned into saleable plastic. “One of the first products it will be made into is recyclable plastic paint cans,” says Goodman.

“This process of dealing with post-consumer latex paint will drastically lower the cost of recycling, not only for consumers, but by lowering the cost of paint recycling and opening it up for the small commercial pot & brush painters—at a low fee— who are usually denied access to public recycling events. Now we can significantly increase the paint recycling rates and decrease the amount that ends up in landfills.”

Plans are also in the works to find ways of remanufacturing oil-based paint and industrial coatings into saleable products, as well as finding uses for leftover cans beyond storing nails at the workbench. “We have a plan to help local governments and municipalities deal more effectively with leftover paint, reduce their costs, help the environment and possibly even make money,” says Goodman. “Dealers’ investment in the charities match-up database subscription list not only saves or makes them money, but it will help support all of these important NCPD paint and paint can recycling initiatives.”

The Rutgers University process may help at the pump as well; Goodman estimates that the ability to combine recycled paint and plastic into virgin plastic paint cans can save 1,705,336 barrels of oil a year. This saves on greenhouse gases, cuts down on global warming and wipes a bit of that smirk off the face of Hugo Chavez.

Recycling paint cans can save up to 220,000 dump truck loads of metal from being tossed into our landfills. “The metal has value,” says Goodman. “The NCPD plan calls for crushing these cans and selling the metal to steel mills. By doing so, we can take a cost and turn it into a revenue stream and preserve more of our natural resources.”

For more information e-mail Marv at marvgoodman@paintrecycling.org or call (732) 309-2022.