The US Environmental Protection Agency estimates that over 69 million gallons of paint are discarded every year.
Now, I know the temptation is to buzz right over that sentence and move onto the next, but hold on…. Stop for a second and think about that fact: 69 million gallons of paint are discarded every year. 69 MILLION gallons.
“OK,” you’re probably thinking, “that’s a big number. But still, that doesn’t seem totally unreasonable when you think of the size of the US.”
Well, let’s put it a different way. Let’s say that every gallon of paint will cover about 400 square feet, 1 coat–we’ll say that because it’s typically true. So, when we get 400 square feet for every gallon of paint . . . and when we’ve got 69 million gallons of paint to work with . . . well, that means we end up with enough paint to cover 27.6 BILLION square feet. That’s Billion with a “B”!
“OK,” you may say, “I agree that’s a big number–a crazy number–but really, in this day and age, we’re throwing numbers like that around all the time. Give me something concrete–something I can understand.”
Well, if you’re thinking something like that when you hear about those big numbers, you’re right. They’re so large, they really almost lose their value. So, let me put it in a way that’s practical–a way that’s easy to understand: 27.6 Billion square feet will cover over 990 Square Miles, 1 coat.
In America, we discard enough paint to paint every square inch of a 990 square mile section of our country. With that in mind, consider that according to the US Census Bureau, Ottawa County in Michigan contains 566 square miles of land. So basically, with 1 year’s worth of America’s discarded paint, we could paint the entire land area of Ottawa County, Michigan . . . nearly 2 times.
That’s a lot of paint.
And as far as we’re concerned, that’s just not acceptable. But what do you do about it? What can we do to make sure as much of the discarded paint can be used as possible?
Well, we’ve got an answer. And there’s a hint–a pretty obvious one–in the picture at the top of the page.
Tomorrow, we’ll dig into it a little further and let you know what we’ve got up our sleeve.
http://www.re-coat.com