I was cleaning out my basement and found several old paint cans that are nearly full. The paint inside is moldy and rotten. The garbage men here won’t take paint cans unless they are empty. What is the best thing to do?
Assuming you’re in the US you probably need to go to your solid waste department website in your area to see what the rules are.
In my area it’s as follows (I just had to deal with this):
Latex paint - mix with cat litter (clay based) until it solidifies and throw away in normal garbage
Oil based paint - take it to the hazardous waste drop off which is at one of our transfer stations
Look for a hazardous waste recycling center. They take paints, household chemicals and such.
You can get paint hardeners at most Home Depots, Lowes, etc.
Take the paint and paint a piece of scrap wood. Once it’s dry, throw it away. Voila!
Maybe I’m missing something, but isn’t this an issue simply because it’s still liquid?
Line a bucket with plastic wrap. Pour in the paint. Leave it to harden. When it’s hard, slide it out and throw it into a garbage bag along with the other waste.
Hazardous waste drop off is free in this city (for residential, non-commercial, limit on number of items). Check the website of your own municipality for info in your specific area.
No need to exert a lot of effort and buy stuff just you can throw something away. Use the system that is already set up for that.
Commercial interests here have to pay, but then, they are often dealing with a lot more volume of waste.
Why would you have to pay for a product to solve the problem ? Thats like government solution for a paint spill in a sensitive area, or something…
They don’t want to have paint spill all over the garbage truck and they do not want to have the turps solvent become (or contribute to) a fire.
So what if you just pour the paint out onto the ground (or a plastic sheet or pile of leaves or something ) and let it dry out there ?
Ok, left field, out of the box thinking… if you are artistic, or have younger children who are, you can make moulds - to make shapes from a casting process - eg make grotesques, particularly grotesque with the life forms growing in it… 
(I was going to call those lifeforms mold, but then we would have molds in moulds. ) . If the paint isn’t setting, if you mixed it with sand it would become solid…
:rolleyes:
READ my post. I advocated nothing of the sort. What I basically said was “Take it to the hazardous waste drop off.” I simply added some reasoning for the thought I expressed. What you got out of it was NOWHERE NEAR what I said.
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I had several partially full cans of latex paint to dispose of last year. Pop the top and pour in kitty litter until full, then stir it around a little. A day later it was hard as a rock and they went in the trash with no problems.
The EPA defines all oil-based paint as household hazardous waste and must be disposed of at a hazardous waste site. Latex paint is subject to state or local regulations.
My county defines all paint and paint products (latex and oil-based) as household hazardous waste and must be disposed of at a hazardous waste site.