Cleaning Contaminated Paint Water

An article written to educate about microplastics in the environment and how to personally prevent responsibility by cleaning and filtering dirty paint water before dumping into the sink.

When you’re painting with acrylics, whether it’s professionally painting a house for a client or painting for fun at home, you usually wash the excess paint off your brushes with a jar or bucket of water and pour that water down the drain when you’re through with it. But this wateris contaminatedwith tiny particles of plastic called ‘microplastics’, and they’re detrimental to the health of the ocean andthereforethe health of the planet.

The companies responsible for most of the plastic pollution these last couple of years are Nestle, Unilever, Pepsi, and Coca-Cola. ESPECIALLY Coca-Cola, as these coke bottles are littering the world and the company declared they wouldn’t abandon their plastic bottles because they were popular with their customers.We ingest annually somewhere between 4,400 to 5,800 particles from tap water, according to a study that took samples from 14 countries (including the United States) and found particles of plastic in 81% of them.

Even if these companies are the bigger issue when concerned with the health of our planet due to microplastics and plastic pollution, there are things that we can do toalleviateyour personal carbon footprint.Painting contractors and personal artists can do this by buying covers for their rollers, avoiding rinsing their paint brushes in the sink or with a hose, and filtering the water when it’s too dirty to continue using.

If you don’t have a filter (the filter that came in your fridge does not count) and want to install one under your sink, I suggest looking up good reverse osmosis filters as this will not only distill and clean your water but will also add minerals and taste. If you’d like to get a filter that sits on the counter or in your fridge, I suggest using either a Brita or Berkey filter. Buying a filter can be expensive and difficultthough, so if you want to filter your paint water for cheap, you can use either of these techniques:

Activated Charcoal

I would use this method for smaller amounts of paint water.

You’ll need:

Activated Charcoal

A zip-top bag and hammer or mortar and pestle

A 2-liter empty soda bottle

A utility knife

Crush up about a cup of charcoal in a zip-top baggie, or with a mortar and pestle. It should be a finer powder when you’re through. Place your crushed charcoal in a double layer of cheesecloth, or a tea towel and tie it up.

Using the utility knife, cut your 2-liter soda bottle in half, cutting the top off just before where the bottle starts to taper. Take off the soda bottle lid and cut a large X into it for the water to drip through slowly. Invert the top of your bottle with the lid screwed on into the bottom of the bottle, so it’s upside down. Place your bag of crushed charcoal into the top of the bottle with the tie top facing down.

Pour your paint water SLOWLY into the top and let it strain through your charcoal bag. It should slowly strain and drip through to the bottom crystal clear. After you’re donewith this charcoal filter simply toss in the trashassolid waste.

Hydrated Lime and Aluminum Sulfate

This is the most popular way to filter paint out of your dirty paint water, and I use this method for larger amounts of contaminated water.

It takes a little more effort and you need to be careful when using chemicals, but it benefits by effectively separating your paint from the water so you can throw away the solid waste.You shouldn’t reuse the water after the separation process, as the microbes in the tap water escape the filtration process and can cause an unpleasant odor and may make your paint mixtures go bad faster.

You’ll need:

Hydrated Lime Aluminum Sulfate

Large bucket with lid

pH test strips

Measuring spoons (keep a set just for using chemicals; DO NOT USE IN KITCHEN AFTER)

Funnel Coffee filters

Small mason jar with lid

Gloves and face mask

Stirringstick

Make sure when you’re opening the bags of chemicals you have them in a resealable bucket, so they won't clump and become unusable due to the moisture in the air. Cut a hole in the top to scoop the chemicals from to prevent dust inhalation. Put on gloves and a face mask before opening the bags.

PER GALLON: Add a heaping half a Tablespoon of Aluminum Sulfate to your contaminated water and stir thoroughly. The best method would be to add this to a small amount of water in a jar with a lid and shake before adding to your strange brew.

Stir in a flat ¾ Tablespoon of Hydrated Lime powder to your contaminated water. If you want to mix in a jarprior toadding again, you should be able to use the same jar.

Test the contaminated water with your pH test strips.If the number is lower than 5, add more hydrated lime.If the number is higher than 9, add more Aluminum Sulphate.

If the paint is not obviously separating in the first 5-10 minutes, add another ½ Tablespoon of Aluminum Sulphate and ¾ Tablespoon of Hydrated lime.

When your water is ready to filter the solids out, place coffee filters into a funnel and pour the water throughabovea large bucket. I used two coffee filters and only had to do this once, but it took all night to filter throughsoI was glad to have a large funnel that covered the opening of my bucket.

Some people will also simply evaporate the water by either letting it sit somewhere warm for a long period of time, but this method is incredibly inefficient as the thin layer that dries on the surface will prevent the water underneath from evaporating. It also smells terrible due to the growth and activity of microbes that thrive in a warm and wet environment.

Others pourtheirused paint water in with cat litter or papertowels sothe liquid gets absorbed, and then the entire thingis thrownaway.Thisis also inefficient as the toxic metals in the paint will alsobe absorbedwith the water and then you just must figure out how to dispose of more contaminated material.

After you have filtered the water or separated the paint, throw it away as a solid waste or take it to a hazardous waste disposal facility.

Paints and microplastics | RIVM. (2021, April 22). https://www.rivm.nl/. Retrieved August 1, 2022, fromhttps://www.rivm.nl/publicaties/paints-and-microplastics

Break Free From Plastic. (2020, December 3).Global Brand Audit Report 2020. Retrieved August 1, 2022, fromhttps://www.breakfreefromplastic.org/globalbrandauditreport2020/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=getresponse&utm_content=LIVE%3A+Plastic+Polluters+Brand+Audit+Report+%26+Invitation+to+Press+Briefing&utm_campaign=Breakfreefromplastic+Membership+Master+List

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J. (2022, May 4).Does Water Filter Remove Microplastics? (Must Read). AquaHow. Retrieved August 1, 2022, fromhttps://www.aquahow.com/does-water-filter-remove-microplastics/#does-brita-filter-remove-microplastics

Envirotek Laboratories, Inc. (2014, October).BLACK BERKEY PURIFICATION ELEMENT TEST REPORT(No. 14–260). Jaime Young.https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0167/5480/2788/files/Berkey_Purification_Element_Chem-Red_Test-9-15_Rev.pdf?11366

Connellan, L. C. [Spines and Splines]. (2021, March 25).Filtering your paint water: how and why. . .[Video]. YouTube.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frw4H92Ax7g

GPW Golden Paint Works [GoldenPaints]. (2011, October 26).Removing Water-Based Paint Solids from Rinse Water[Video]. YouTube.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YWW20Lxpi4