Sponsored by:
Senator JAMES BEACH
District 6 (Burlington and Camden)
SYNOPSIS
Requires paint producers to implement or participate in paint stewardship program.
CURRENT VERSION OF TEXT
As introduced.
An Act requiring producers of architectural paint to implement or participate in a paint stewardship program, and supplementing Title 13 of the Revised Statutes.
Be It Enacted by the Senate and General Assembly of the State of New Jersey:
1. This act shall be known and may be cited as the Architectural Paint Stewardship Act.
2. The Legislature finds and declares that local governments, businesses, and residents of the State do not have ready access to an efficient, environmentally sound, and cost-effective disposal method for architectural paint; and that hazardous waste collection days are costly for local governments and insufficient, inconvenient, and too infrequent to properly serve local businesses and residents, resulting in missed opportunities to reduce, reuse, and recycle paint.
The Legislature further finds and declares that the producers of architectural paint are best able to assume responsibility for the development and implementation of a cost-effective paint stewardship program that will provide fiscal relief to local governments by reducing the volumes of leftover paint, promoting its reuse, and providing for the collection, transportation, and processing of such paint.
The Legislature therefore determines that it is in the best interests of the State for the producers of architectural paint to provide for the planning and implementation of a program to collect, reuse, recycle, transport, and dispose of post-consumer architectural paint.
3. As used in this act:
Architectural paint means interior or exterior architectural coatings that are sold in containers of five gallons or less. Architectural paint shall not mean industrial, original equipment, or specialty use coatings.
Commissioner means the Commissioner of Environmental Protection.
Department means the Department of Environmental Protection.
Distributor means a person who has a contractual relationship with one or more producers to market and sell architectural paint to retailers.
Energy recovery means a procedure in which all or a part of the solid waste materials of architectural paint are processed to use the heat content or other forms of energy from the solid waste materials.
Environmentally sound management practices means the policies or procedures for collection, storage, transportation, reuse, recycling, and disposal of architectural paint, which are implemented by a producer, representative organization, or their contracted partners to ensure compliance with all applicable federal, State, and local laws, rules, regulations, and ordinances, and the protection of human health and the environment, and which address matters such as adequate recordkeeping, accurate tracking and documentation of the use, reuse, recycling, or disposal of post-consumer architectural paint within and outside of the State, and adequate provision of environmental liability coverage for professional services and for the operations of contractors working on behalf of a producer or representative organization.
Paint stewardship assessment means the assessed amount, established pursuant to section 5 of this act, which is added to the purchase price of architectural paint sold in the State.
Post-consumer architectural paint means architectural paint not used and no longer wanted by a consumer.
Producer means a manufacturer of architectural paint that is sold, offered for sale, or distributed in the State, either under the producer s own name or under any other brand name.
Recycling means any process used to transform discarded products, components, or by-products into new usable or marketable materials, and which process may cause those discarded products, components, or by-products to lose their original composition or identity. Recycling shall not include energy recovery or energy generation by means of combustion or incineration.
Representative organization means a nonprofit organization that is established by, and for the benefit of, two or more architectural paint producers in the State, and which is tasked with the development of an architectural paint stewardship program plan, in accordance with section 4 of this act, and implementation of the plan on behalf of, and with the participation of, each member producer.
Retailer means any person who sells architectural paint or offers architectural paint for sale at retail to consumers in the State.
Reuse means the return of a product into the economic stream for use in the same kind of application originally intended for the product, without a change in the product s original composition or identity.
Sell or sale means any transfer of title for consideration, including, but not limited to, remote sales transactions conducted through sales outlets, catalogs, or the Internet, or through any other similar electronic means.
4. a. Within one year after the date of enactment of this act, every producer of architectural paint, or any representative organization established pursuant to this act, shall prepare and submit to the commissioner, for the commissioner s approval, a plan for an architectural paint stewardship program. The plan shall minimize public sector involvement in the management of post-consumer architectural paint by reducing its generation, promoting its reuse and recycling, and negotiating and executing agreements for its collection, transportation, reuse, recycling, burning for energy recovery, incineration, and disposal using environmentally sound management practices.
b. The plan submitted pursuant to this section shall:
(1) provide for convenient and available Statewide collection of post-consumer architectural paint from urban, suburban, and rural areas of the State in a manner that, at a minimum, ensures collection rates and a level of convenience equal to or greater than that provided by other collection programs available to consumers prior to the establishment of the architectural paint stewardship program;
(2) provide collection site locations Statewide that will accept post-consumer architectural paint, through the use of geographic information modeling, such that at least 90 percent of State residents have a permanent collection site within 15 miles of their residence, that permanent collection sites be established for every 30,000 residents of a population center, and that collection sites be distributed to provide convenient and equitable access for residents within each population center, unless otherwise authorized by the department. For those persons who do not have a permanent collection site within 15 miles of their residence, the plan shall provide for annual collection events;
(3) address, to the extent reasonably feasible and mutually agreeable, the coordination of the architectural paint stewardship program with the existing infrastructure of local governments and the existing household hazardous waste collection infrastructure in the State;
(4) in accordance with the provisions of section 5 of this act, identify an appropriate amount for the paint stewardship assessment;