Earning Money Through Recycling

An annual yard and home clean-up is a good idea to help get rid of excess trash, broken and discarded items, and yard waste. During a clean-up, you can collect any items in your home that are eligible for recycling instead of including them in the trash dumpster. Unused paint and cooking oil are two such items that are commonly not considered but are eligible for recycling. Here is some information about how you can recycle unused paint and cooking oil.

Paint 

Americans throw away an estimated 69 million gallons of paint every year. This statistic may not be surprising because even when you give your best effort to estimating the amount of paint you will need for a project, you may end up with excess paint.  It is recommended to calculate the square footage of the walls or other surface you will be painting, including any double coatings, and buy only the amount you need. One gallon of paint will cover approximately 350 square feet of space with a single coat, so use this measurement when calculating your paint needs. 

Although it can be easy for the paint to stack up in your home storage from previous projects, there are recycling programs you can take advantage of. It also depends on the type of paint you have. Oil-based paints and spray paints are considered to be hazardous waste and you cannot recycle them. Also, any paints containing mercury, mildew protection, or paint labeled as a wood preservative, are considered household hazardous materials. 

The best way to get rid of oil-based paints is to open the lid and allow the paint to dry out. Then, contact your local waste management company to see if they will accept the paint. You can also contact a local paint retailer to see if they can dispose of your dried oil-based and spray paints. When they are destroyed, the paints will be incinerated, cans and all. 

If you have latex and water-based paints, you can donate them to a local community organization to be reused. Local churches, high school drama departments, charities, or your neighbor may accept paint to use for craft projects. Be sure to leave the paints in their original cans to identify any chemicals they contain. You can also recycle water and latex paint at a paint recycling company. When paints are recycled, they are blended with other unused paints, then processed and mixed with new paint and other new materials to be sold as recycled paint.

Cooking Oil

Even if you don't own a restaurant, you can accumulate containers of used cooking oil at home from frying foods. Especially at Thanksgiving time, you might use a large batch of cooking oil to fry your family turkey. When your cooking oil is at the end of its useful life, it needs to be discarded. But it is dangerous to pour it down the drain and you can't compost it. Used cooking oil can solidify when it is poured down your drain pipes and build up to a pipe clog. Then, used oil that is mixed into your local water supply contaminates the water and it is hard to remove.

Fortunately, used cooking oils can be recycled into many different products, including cosmetics, soap, fertilizer, livestock feed, renewable energy fuel, and biodiesel fuel. Renewable energy fuel is used as heating oil, and to power buildings and transportation. Used cooking oil is also used to create biodiesel, which is made by altering the oils to burn more like a petroleum-based fuel. You can even create your own biodiesel at home by learning from one of several online instruction sources.

Used cooking oils are combined with organic wastes, and other feed stuffs to create livestock and pet foods. Most of the oil is exported to Mexico and Venezuela where it is produced into animal feed.

If you want to recycle your used cooking oil, you can search for a nearby recycling center, or call a local restaurants to see if you can add your used oil to theirs for the next oil recycling pickup.

For more information on waste removal and recycling, contact a company like E.L. Harvey & Sons in your area.