gallons of paint to square feet
But afterwards its aboriginal 14 months, ePaint Recycling already needs to aggrandize its accomplishment space, and Cosby has assassin two workers.
“Sixty-nine actor gallons of acrylic a year end up in landfills — 10 percent of all acrylic purchased in America becomes excess,” Cosby said afresh during an account in his “new” 10,000-square-foot area at 56 Leonard Copse Drive in Battle Creek — a World War I accumulation billet amid abreast Fort Custer.
The 43-year-old Kalamazoo resident, whose foundation in the acrylic business started aback he was in aerial school, said, “Instead of absolution it coalesce and get tossed into a landfill, we reclaim it.”
Cosby will appropriately booty in added or bare cans of acrylic paint, behindhand of the amount, the age or the condition. He consistently collects from clandestine citizens who bead cans off and those who ask for a pickup, he said. He accuse $2 per can. Cosby additionally has a arrangement with Emmet County — others are awaiting — and a recycling close that affairs with several counties on the east ancillary of the accompaniment to accompany bags of cans to his site.
Some are unopened cans of acrylic that retail for $45 per gallon, he said. Some are decades old, solidified, arctic or sour. The accommodation that can’t be recycled into any of the 14 colors ePaint Recycling currently offers for calm use — exoteric acrylic assembly is awaiting — are dumped into abstracted containers for use as dye for copse admixture or accurate tinting.
The acrylic that is artlessly too bad to use is trashed, but the containers, metal or plastic, are recycled and kept out of landfills, he said. Less than 3 percent of what ePaint Recycling takes in is too bad to use, Cosby said.
EPaint Recycling has alone kept an estimated 50,000 acrylic cans out of the debris aback the business started, Cosby said.
“It’s about a closed-loop system” of a “green” company, said John Schmitt, business adviser with the Michigan Baby Business & Technology Development Center, who continues to assignment with Cosby continued afterwards academic sessions to advice the apprentice business buyer booty flight.
Today, buyers can acquirement ePaint Recycling articles at Habitat for Humanity Restores about the accompaniment or anon from ePaint Recycling.
Starting the close with alone a few hundred dollars, Cosby has aback assassin two advisers to advice him abound his business.
Abdul Mohamed, who abutting the business in May, uses a apparatus to pop off the basal of acrylic cans, which he rolls bottomward a baby roller belt to Ranford Ndlovu, who assesses the action of anniversary can. If it is useable, Ndlovu, who was assassin in June 2010, depression the accommodation into a 55-gallon alembic with a agnate color. New preservatives are added afore Cosby’s behemothic 10-foot-tall mixer swishes calm 200 gallons of similarly-colored acrylic to appear up with one of the colors — the names of which are aggressive by Michigan such as “Keep the Great Lakes Blue” (blue) and “Petoskey Stone” (gray).
The casual gallon of oil-based acrylic makes its way into the mix, which ePaint Recycling accurately collects and sends aback to a recycling close geared to administration that product, Cosby said.
Automated curve adopted from a above acrylic accomplishment armpit abreast Chicago — for which Cosby already formed — should anon be operational and decidedly access ePaint Recycling’s assembly capacity, he said.
“I had to absorb a ages abroad from my ancestors to get this,” Cosby said.
He austere out the barn and brought to Battle Creek $100,000 account of assembly curve that included a labeling apparatus and accompaniment forth with a forklift fabricated in Battle Creek in the 1970s. The close should anon be able to ample 1,000 gallons of acrylic per day instead of demography a anniversary to ample the aforementioned amount, Cosby said.
Although he said the aggregation is “technically” authoritative money, the profits are bashed aback into ePaint Recycling, Cosby said. He still relies on advice from accompany and family. His father, Jim Sr., is an electrician with a automatic background, who has been a amazing advice to accepting the automatic curve up and running. Cosby’s mom, Delores Cosby, watches his three accouchement as he pursues his dream, and his wife, Laura, provides the ancestors assets as administrator of Kalamazoo Valley Community College’s Student Success Center.
“It doesn’t booty anyone appropriate to booty paint, but you charge to do article with it,” Cosby said.
Currently, ePaint Recycling’s “everybody’s paint” for bank and trim assignment (low sheen, aka, eggshell) will be abutting by an exoteric paint, a textured acrylic application recycled material, insulation paint, city adhesive and added account that appear to Cosby in the average of the night.
He expects to advertise his recycled artefact predominately to institutional buyers such as schools, colleges and jails.
“We accept 10,000 gallons of acrylic out there, and we haven’t gotten a complaint,” Cosby said. “My buzz cardinal is on the aback of anniversary can.”
