Dispose of your motor oil properly, avoid hefty fines
Where can I take used motor oil for recycling?
Ask your local municipality. Many regions have household hazardous waste depots.
If there are none in your area, check with a local garage. They might be willing to accept your used oil, filters and empty oil bottles, but could ask a small disposal fee to cover the per-litre charge they incur for waste-oil collection. Formerly, when crude oil prices were high, garages were paid for waste oil rather than having to pay for collection. The recovered oil is then re-refined and reused.
Illegally dumping oil can lead to hefty fines and an astronomical bill for environmental cleanup.
Municipalities have successfully followed the oil trail left inside storm drains and/or used security video to track down and charge those responsible. Just curious. In some remote Yukon communities, all supplies are flown in. So how do locals dispose of old motor oil? It would be too costly to fly out, but illegal dumping devastates the environment.
Whitehorse residents receive twice annual household hazardous waste collection, including used oil. In most other Yukon communities, it’s once every two years. Businesses can sign up for government special waste collection.
Over 60 per cent of all used oil generated throughout the Yukon is recovered through burning in approved furnaces designed to consume used motor oil. A no-cost permit is required, and users must meet emission standards.
I presume any garage with a waste-oil furnace would gladly accept this free fuel source for heating from do-it-yourselfers. Empty motor oil bottles aren’t accepted in my blue box, so where should they go?
Empty oil bottles are best taken to a toxic waste facility for disposal. If there are none in your area, ask a local garage. (Though, really, do-ityourself oil changes often don’t save much, if any.)
If your municipality advises placing empty oil jugs in the trash, please properly drain containers first, as the average “empty” onelitre bottle still has up to 40 millilitres of residual oil. Flip roughly 25 empty 1L bottles, or five empty 5L jugs, upside down overnight to drain, and you’ll have one full litre of oil. Not bad if it’s expensive, synthetic oil.
Environmentalists label the millions of litres of fresh and waste oil sent annually to the dump by do-it-yourselfers as the “invisible oil spill.” Save your money and save the planet by capturing this valuable resource instead.