1000 Flowers for the Planet - #278 Recycle Car Oil

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #278 Recycle Car Oil

Used car oil can contain contaminants such as lead, cadmium, chromium, arsenic, dioxins, benzene and polycyclic aromatics. Do any of these things sound like they’d be great in the environment? When used car oil is dumped into landfill or tossed onto the garden it gets into the environment via urban runoff. In the waterways, one gallon of oil can contaminate about a million gallons of water.

Used oil can be successfully recycled and used over and over again. Here in Australia we buy about 500 million litres of lubricating oil every year and we recycle about half of that, which is not bad but there’s plenty of room for improvement. How does your country compare? Let’s keep oil out of the environment by making a little effort to take it to a recycling depot and doing the right thing by the planet. A really good fact sheet with lots more information can be found at: [http://www.environment.gov.au/protection/publications/factsheet-why-we-should-recycle-used-motor-oil].