Michigan Water Stewardship Program
What Do I Do With My Used Motor Oil?
We are a culture where driving has become a necessary fact of life. We can try to limit
the amount we drive our cars and trucks, but taking it out of our lives completely is near
impossible. One tip to help increase your fuel efficiency and keep your vehicle running
well is having regular oil changes. If you have an oil change done for you by a garage or
service they either recycle the used motor oil or use it to heat their premises. What if you
are a do-it-yourselfer? What do you do with your oil? Do you dump the oil down the
drain, dump it out back on the ground, or do you recycle it?
Why should we recycle used motor oil? Oil takes hundreds of years to decompose, so the
oil you put into our environment is going to be there for a long time. It can seep through
soils and landfills to contaminate groundwater supplies. It makes up 40% of all the oil
pollution in our nation’s waterways. That makes it the largest single source of oil
pollution.
Used motor oil can be one nasty contaminant! It only takes 1 gallon of used motor oil to
contaminate 1 million gallons of fresh water. Now consider this, every 18 days about 11
million gallons is disposed of improperly. That is a lot of water contaminated by
something that is easily recycled.
Used oil never wears out; it just gets dirty. Reprocessing used oil saves on energy and
non-renewable petroleum resources. One gallon of used motor oil will produce 2.5 quarts
of lubricating oil. To produce that same amount of lubricating oil would take 42 gallons
of crude oil.
Where do I recycle my oil? You can bring your used oil to most car repair garages. Best
thing to do is call ahead and ask how they dispose of their used oil and then depending on
the answer whether or not they can take yours. Most places will take it as long as it is less
than five gallons. Another place is ??? in your local town or area. They will take it all as
long as it is not mixed with antifreeze. If you have any questions about what they will or
will not take call them at oil recycler’s phone number.
If you have any questions about used motor oil recycling or recycling in general call your
organization at your phone number or email.