When I was at work The Telephone Pioneer organization used to do a one day paint recycle at a number of cities in the province. My job was to make sure we had the volunteers and have them scheduled over the weekend. Also to make sure they were feed and watered.
We would decide if the paint was reusable or scrapped. If scrapped we would dump the into a sealable barrel. Didn’t matter if it was latex or oil, turpentine, mineral spirits or or some type of thinner. As long as it was a paint item and not some type of chemical.
We had industrial can openers, aerosol recovery equipment and even had a paint can crusher made with a series of large spaced rollers and moving down to a pancake size opening. That was pretty cool piece of equipment.
I made many wood scrappers from chunks of scrap wood approx 4”x12” probably old fence board. If you cut it properly you got 2 equal scrappers per piece. The scrap of the first cut should be roughly the inverse of the other, so 2 scrappers per piece of scrap. Then just put a 45 degree cut on the blade portion for scrapping.
The barrelled material was sent to a plant where they added it to the fuel for some type of burner that used it create heat for their manufacturing process.
It was surprising how many cans even 5 gallon cans that were brand new and never even opened. I’m still kicking my self for not scoring 4 gallon containers of Texaco green in cans actually marked for and labelled Texaco that were pristine.
I've inhaled and bathed in that stuff.
And not only did we not wear gloves, we used the stuff to clean our hands and arms when we got greasy.
Don't get me started on the tons of brake dust I've inhaled over the years, probably done a million brake jobs..lol
