How to clean your paintbrushes and rollers

Trade bodies collaborate in industry effort to help consumers be more sustainable

The British Coatings Federation (BCF) and the Painting and Decorating Association (PDA) have collaborated to produce a new video which will help consumers save time, money and resources when painting.

Many DIYers are wasting paint, water and time by unnecessarily cleaning brushes and rollers before the end of a project. As well as tips on how to store paint brushes and rollers overnight, the video explains how to recover paint from painting tools before washing them.

The new video was filmed with PDA member Bagnalls, a leading UK painting and decorating contractor, and produced in-house by BCF. The decorating tools used in the video were kindly donated by Purdy.

By following the guidance, the key savings identified in the video are:

• Recovering up to 75% of paint lost by cleaning paint brushes and rollers correctly after use
• Spending four times less time cleaning painting tools
• Using 10 litres less water

As trade bodies for the UK Decorative Paint industry, both BCF and PDA are committed to actively supporting sustainability initiatives being undertaken by the sector. Both BCF and PDA have committed to schemes - leading projects are Paint Green from PDA and PaintCare from BCF.

Tom Bowtell, CEO of the BCF, commented: ‘Sustainability is core to BCF’s work. This new video is a great example of how small changes can make a big difference. If every household followed these guidelines, we could collectively save approximately 2.5 million litres of decorative paint per year, the equivalent of 100 Olympic-sized swimming pools!’

PDA Chief Executive, Neil Ogilvie, said: “This new video fits perfectly with our Paint Green’s campaign aim to help PDA Members create systemic change to protect the environment.

‘We are initially focusing on waste and taking up existing schemes for paint and container recycling – however, we are already getting feedback from Members on further steps towards sustainable working practices that we can introduce in the future.’

Joanne Gualda, Director at Bagnalls, commented: ‘There are many ways in which Bagnalls is addressing its impact on the environment from paint can recycling to donating leftover paint to projects through our established Community Paintbrush scheme. We were more than happy to support the BCF, the PDA and other painting industry experts in creating an informative video that portrays such an important environmental message.’

Visit the PDA website here: https://paintingdecoratingassociation.co.uk/

Visit the Bagnalls website here: https://www.bagnalls.co.uk/