As you may recall I moved my Italian Plasterworks studio back to my house. I have a showroom at the new location but am keeping the laboratory work for our clients away from the new space. Metro Wallworks' focus is on the work of students and clients as well as our new thing, Recycled Paint. In just a couple of weeks many gallons of recycled paint will be sharing space right next to buckets of fancy Italian plasters. What do they have in common? Aside from the fact that they both go on walls and I am passionate about both materials they take use very little energy to produce. The process of slaking lime is completely ancient with little environmental impact. Pits are dug and the lime is slowly cooked by burning recycled wood. Recycled paint is made through a low impact process of filtering and scrubbing. Manufacturing new paint is a huge energy suck. It take approximately 1000 kilo watt hours of energy to create just 10 gallons of paint. That is the same amount of energy it takes to run an average home for a month.
I've worked long and hard at becoming the self appointed queen of Venetian Plaster west of the Mississippi(the queen on the east side is Debra Cambell of Wallartistry). So why am I on a crusade to sell recycled flat latex paint? Simply because this should be done. It's too easy of a way in which to change our environment for the better. About 10 percent of all paint lands up in landfills. We are talking about 7 million gallons in the state of California alone. So we have 7 million gallons do dispose of and we aren't putting it back on our walls? That is just as ridiculous as saying I will only drink beer out of a bottle that was made with virgin glass. I don't really follow glass production but I imagine company's like Owen Illinois and PPG were a little bummed at first, but they adjusted and now we all expect glass to be recycled with the exception of our fine crystal etc... I would so like to see paint go this way as well and I fully believe it will. Metro Wallworks is in a perfect position to get this started. I am not a paint store and have no business relationship with any paint company so I don't care if they are mad it me.* Overhead on Metro Wallworks is very low (low overhead is the new black) which is imperative to keeping the price below that of new paint. Given that we sell buckets of Venetian Plaster our distribution channel ready to go.
On Saturdays at 2065 South Escondido Blvd. Escondido 92025 (Metro Wallworks ) is where you will see worlds collide and hopefully empowering each other all around the subject of walls. You will have the decorative artisan/master craftsman milling around with those passionate about easing the footprint on our planet. All putting something on walls. In order for Metro Wallworks to remain responsible for what we sell, we will take back all of our unused or half empty buckets of our paint. In efforts to encourage this, we will be holding events on Saturdays which include both beer** and demos of how to be decorative with recycled paint. I am going to call on my friends in the decorative painting world to come up with some amazing finishes. Stay tuned and please contact me if you have any ideas you would like to share.
*Big Candy already doesn't like me as I am editor of http://www.slavefreechocolate.org/. Big Paint can just get behind them. Maybe someday Julian Assange can go on the lam together.
**I have this vision of having start up brewery's give out samples of their beer on Satudays but I am not sure how its going to work with the City of Escondido yet.
