Patrick Desmond became involved with ACAP around 1993. At the time, ACAP was a fledgling organization and one of their first projects was a Materials Exchange (a database where companies list surplus or unused excess materials). Patrick was hired as the coordinator for this project to match the supply of these materials to a final home or user for the materials.

At the time, he was completing his M.Sc. in Environmental Studies at UNB Fredericton. During his first year of being hired, the Executive Director, Frank Hogan, left to pursue other interests. The Board suggested that Patrick would make a good replacement for Frank. However, being a full time student plus having a full time job was thought to be too much, so Patrick had a great idea: share the Executive Director’s job! Allison Lowe was in Patrick’s grad school class and decided to both work part time hours as ED and still have time to finish their degrees. Allison and Patrick shared the ED position for almost 5 years!

Paint Swap

Check out what Patrick had to say about one of his most memorable ACAP projects!

The project which I most enjoyed was the Paint Swap. We ran it for 2 -3 years. The idea – piggy backing on the Materials Exchange idea - was to keep left over paint out of the landfill by having a one day event where people brought in leftover/excess paint and then the volunteers would mix latex paints together and oil paints together and give it out free of charge to anyone that wanted it. We advertised it heavily and received permission from McAllister Mall to set up in one corner of the parking lot to run the exchange.

The first year was a great hit – paint would come in – we opened it up to make sure it was still good – mixed it with other like paints and then handed it back out. Any paint that was no good we had hired Laidlaw Environmental to take it away in totes which they supplied. Empty cans were put in a dumpster. The lineup to receive good paint was unbelievable. People would line up and stand there and just take whatever we would give out. Any good paint was almost gone immediately.

With the great success of the first year, we planned a second one the following year. The funding to pay Laidlaw came from the Environmental Trust Fund and the bill was over $10,000 the first year. Well, the second year Paint Swap made the first one appear like a dud. The day of the event, the cars were lined up 25 – 50 deep to drop off paint! People were pushing hard to get the good paint. It was full on pandemonium at times. Some cars drove up and dropped off full, unopened cans of paint. It was then that other issues began to emerge – one guy showed up with what looked like dynamite sticks he wanted to get rid of – other people were dropping off pesticides and other materials that we really didn’t want or expect. It was a good thing the Laidlaw guys were there to handle all of these unexpected items.

While it was a huge success, the bill from Laidlaws doubled or tripled from Year 1 to Year 2. Concerns were raised at the Board level of liability of volunteers being injured with some of the material coming in. It is here that my memory gets foggy as I don’t think we ran it the third year. I think we submitted the proposal for a third year but the Environmental Trust Fund did not want to give us the money as the cost of the project was starting to be much more than they wanted to spend for paint disposal. That and the liability of the volunteers weighed heavily on the Board members concerns.

I look back at this project as one of the best for a number of reasons: HUGE community buy in, many volunteers worked and loved the project, huge amounts of paint, oil and latex kept out of the landfill and proper disposal of waste paint. I just loved this project.

With the price of paint now – maybe it is time to start another Paint Swap!!