Now and then one comes across a thorny recycling problem. I have one on my back porch:
This fine selection of crappy old paints was bequeathed to us by the former owners of our house. We have happily ignored it for two years, but now it’s time to take action.
Trouble is, as Nelson County residents, we actually don’t have an option for recycling paint cans (whether empty or full—and our collection includes both). If we take the lids off and let the paint dry out, then we can put them in Nelson County dumpsters with other trash. But I’m loathe to do that given that the paint and the cans are both recyclable.
If we lived in Albemarle, I could take full cans to the Ivy landfill site for recycling. And it seems anyone can take empty cans to Coiner’s Scrap Metal on Meade Avenue (Better World Betty tells me so). But then I’d have to empty out the paint…into what?
It looks like the only legit way to recycle the paint and the cans is to wait until the next time Albemarle lets us Nelsonians come to the Ivy landfill with our stuff. Which, going by this schedule, will probably not be until next May. The Habitat Store doesn’t take paint, unfortunately.
Have you ever started feeling silly after exhaustively researching your options for not wasting something? Like maybe you’ve reached the point of diminishing returns?