Aquastar Reports on Drain Buy Back Program

When the Virginia Graeme Baker Pool and Spa Safety Act’s stricter safety standards went into effect December 19, 2008, pool products distributors and retailers were faced with a major problem—what to do with the tens of thousands of unsafe and now illegal drain covers in their inventories.

San Diego-based AquaStar Pool Products, Inc., provided a solution for pool products distributors and retailers with large inventories of non-compliant drains with the announcement of their Buy Back Program. AquaStar announced it would “buy back” the now illegal drains and replace them with safe, compliant VGB Series drains.

“The Buy Back Program has taken tens of thousands of unsafe drains off the shelves of distributors and retailers across the nation over the last few months,” AquaStar co-founder Olaf Mjelde says. “We have been working around the clock to rid the market of these unsafe products.”

The Buy Back Program has allowed businesses to clear old inventory and restock compliant drains with one simple transaction, while ensuring that all products returned will be recycled. None of the non-compliant drains collected through the Buy Back Program will be thrown into a dumpster or will find their way to a landfill. Instead, they will be ground down to the raw materials and used to make other products, reducing waste and cutting back the consumption of new materials.

“When we developed the Buy Back Program, we saw an opportunity to recycle the drains that would otherwise be thrown in the dumpster,” says Mjelde. “The program not only keeps these unsafe drains out of swimming pools, it keeps them out of the landfill.”