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Community RePaint Leeds

Community RePaint Leeds is a colourful, imaginative scheme run by grassroots social enterprise Seagulls Re-use Ltd, founded by Cat Pearson and Kate Moree. Paint reuse is a core activity of the organisation with Community RePaint Leeds being officially launched in 2006.

By building a strong relationship with Leeds City Council (LCC), Seagulls now receives payments for each of its regular paint collections from three household waste recycling centres, with another two sites due to come on stream. LCC is able to make these payments from the resulting savings to its hazardous waste disposal budget.

Through the Business Reuse Fund, Seagulls provides a collection service for surplus paint to local companies. This service, coupled with the collection of leftover paint from painters and decorators, provides an additional source of income to Seagulls.

In 2005, Seagulls collected a whopping 40 tonnes of paint and reached an annual turnover of £95,000. Seagulls employs two full-time workers and four volunteers. Workers also perform an educational role through promoting reuse and recycling to customers. Paint collected by the group is redistributed to a wide variety of local community groups and people on low incomes, and other scrap materials and textiles are also collected for reuse. In 2003, Seagulls won a Community Champions award for its social enterprise activities.