Eco-Friendly Painting Practices to Keep the Main Line Beautiful
Keeping the earth its brightest shade of blues and greens is just as important as keeping our homes vibrant and looking their best. Over the years the construction and painting businesses haven’t always been leaders in the green movement, but many of the environmentally conscious painting practices used by companies like Nolan are empowering us to guide the industry toward a new legacy of conscious material choices and healthy practices. Our commitment to community beautification doesn’t begin and end with your home interior – it’s a belief with which we approach every aspect of business, whether that means recycling leftover paints, practicing environmentally safe cleanup procedures, or purchasing renewable energy for the office.
Beyond the Surface: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Our Business Practices
Often companies will find a way to scrape by with offering the minimal market standards for environmentally safe practices. Others will even disregard the legal standards for lead-safe painting practices, or charge extra for work that is done safely. What sets us apart is the way we take a green approach to every aspect of our business by:
- Donating leftover paint
- Safely disposing of paint that we can’t donate
- Washing brushes in environmentally safe ways
- Limiting our carbon footprint
- Recycling trash in separate bins at the shop
- Purchasing renewable energy for our building
Paint Belongs on Our Walls, Not in Our Rivers
A key challenge for painting companies is making sure that the materials we use stay where they belong – on your walls and out of nature. Practicing safe clean-up practices is one way we keep our environmental impact to a minimum. The great thing about paint is that it actually lasts an extremely long time. That’s why we avoid disposing of paint, and donate it to Habitat for Humanity instead. They put it to good use and give a beautiful interior to someone in need. That sounds a lot better than pouring it out and risking environmental contamination.
What You Just Can’t Use, Dispose of Safely
Sometimes paint is just not going to be useful for Habitat for Humanity, in which case we find safe alternatives to dispose of the leftovers. We don’t wash brushes in back yards with hoses, or homes with leach fields. We wash latex brushes in customer approved sinks that have municipal sewage or we bring them back to our facility and wash them there. The municipal sewage systems can filter and dispose of latex residue properly, making sure that it doesn’t end up polluting the environment. Additionally, we bring all of our solvent based materials back to our shop and pay to have them properly and professionally disposed of.
More Urgent than Ever
As of the recent climate talks in Paris, the US has pledged that carbon emissions are going to be down 26% from where they were at in 2005[1.”The Paris Climate Meeting: A Quick Guide.” LiveScience. November 30, 2015. Accessed December 4, 2015. http://www.livescience.com/52930-the-paris-climate-meeting-a-quick-guide.html.- a goal that each one of us is going to have to step up to the plate to meet. At Nolan, we’re conscious of our carbon footprint, and we constrain sales and crew territories to limit the amount of carbon dioxide we generate by driving around every day. We also purchase renewable energy for our office, to support the industries that are working to control climate change and avoid expending additional gas in our daily operations.
Making the Green Choice
We are all in this community together. We grew up playing in our Pennsylvania parks and rivers, and we work with families that enjoy those same places. They’re a vital part of our community, and we just couldn’t live with ourselves if we were out there on the job, making choices that would destroy our parks and rivers.
When you’re considering a home renovation along the Main Line, partner with the painters who are as invested in our community as you are. Together we can keep the Main Line looking its best for years to come.
Nolan has been painting homes in the community since 1979. Contact us today for a consultation.