Todmorden News

Interview With Newlfe Recycled Paint's Graham Griffiths

Newlife Paints Ltd is the only company in the UK that takes waste emulsion paint, destined primarily for landfill, and uses it as the basis for manufacturing a complete range of recycled paint.

Following their innovative manufacturing process they ensure any waste paint degradation, normally caused by fungal and bacterial growth, is eliminated. The end result is high quality emulsion paint, in a range of 20 colours and 3 finishes, suitable for interior use. Newlife Paints can offer a colour matching service and create paint in a colour exclusive to you.

Newlife Paints co-founder Graham Griffiths explains about the concept and how the process of recycling paint actually works…

Recycled paint? That’s an unusual concept. Where did the idea come from?

Around 7 or 8 years ago, my business partner Keith was cleaning out his garage and found 15 old paint tins and thought about how much of a waste it was to just throw them into landfill. So 6 months later he began to experiment in a makeshift lab in his garage, trying to see if he could recover any paint from the unusable waste left in the tins. When he realised he could, he looked for ways to exploit this idea commercially. Nothing was forthcoming at the time, so in 2008 Keithset up Newlife Paints in order to commercially exploit this methodology. Keith then asked me to join him and develop the sales and marketing activity.

Without getting too technical, can you describe for our readers how you recycle waste paint?

Well firstly we have an arrangement in place with Hampshire County Council whereby they stream off the waste paint and deliver it to us on a weekly basis. Once it is in our possession we sort and bulk the tins together by colour, placing similar colours together in order to make up our current pattern of just over 20 colours. We then remove every last drop of paint from the original tins, which are then sent to be recycled, with the paint being stored in our production drum.

The paint is then mixed using a very powerful mixer built to our own design.Once it has been mixed we conduct a variety of quality checks on the paint. These include tests on the paint’s pH and its viscosity, with additions made in order to make sure it meets our high standards. We then add stabilisers and ensure there is no bacterial and fungal infection in the paint.

We then put the paint into our own pots and it is ready for sale. One of the unique features of Newlife Paints is that as we are able to trace each pot of our paint back along the production line to the original paint it was made from. Each tub has its own story. Every 5 litres of Newlife Paint stops 3 waste tins from going to landfill.

Obviously one of the main advantages of using recycled paint is that it saves unused paint from going to landfill. How much paint do you aim to recycle annually in the long term?

Currently we are producing around 1000 litres a week, but with our current facilities we could feasibly produce up to 6900 litres a week if necessary. We are currently looking to expand our production line and in the next 5 years we will be hopefully producing around 1 million litres a year.

How does the quality compare with other paint on the market?

Very favourable. The majority of the paint we receive, around 75%, is Dulux or Crown, so we have a good base product anyway. To ensure our paint is up to the mark we have developed a process toimprove the viscosity and opacity (covering power) of the finished product.We firmly believe that our paint is considerably better than the abundance of the cheaper shops-own brands you will find on the market.

Congratulations on your recent win at the National Recycling Awards. How did that come about? Have you noticed any increased interest in the company since receiving your award?

It is an interesting story actually. Keith’s daughter Amy who also works for the company had been keen to enterNewlife Paints into a competition of some sort for some time, but we were usually reluctant is the competitions were usually recycling based and we were wary of receiving too many donations of paint on the back of it, when we receive more than enough to cover our existing demand already!

However we decided to enter the West Sussex Recycling competition anyway and after Keith filled the form in, Amy copied all the details and entered us into the National Recycling Awards, where we were delighted to be shortlisted let alone win! We are overjoyed to receive this national recognition for our product and hope it can prove to be the catalyst to move the company on to the next level.

Finally, there are many eco paints on the market, why should people buy Newlife Paint?

Whilst there are other eco paints on the market, I do feel that for many their eco-credentials are not assured. When you buy a pot of Newlife Paint you know that you are stopping more paint from going to landfill. It is not a new paint being produced in an environmentally friendly fashion, we are recycling paint which would otherwise be thrown away and not making many other additions to it in order to create a paint which we believe can stand side by side with any other premium paint.

Interview courtesy of Restoration & Beyond online suppliers of Newlife Paints recycled paint products.