Recycle Your Used Motor Oil and Oil Filters

Oil in your car, motorcycle, or boat picks up hazardous contaminates such as arsenic and benzene that are dangerous to the environment. Dumped into a storm drain, onto the ground, or put out with the garbage, the oil ends up in the Bay, in streams, rivers, or in groundwater, where one gallon of used motor oil could conceivably contaminate 1,000,000 gallons of water. Recycling is the environmentally safe and legal way to dispose of used motor oil and oil filters.
Recycling also helps preserve valuable, nonrenewable natural resources. One gallon of used motor oil can be refined into 2.5 quarts of new lubricant that is equivalent in quality to virgin motor oil. Each filter, when drained, contains about a pound of steel and between two and eight ounces of oil. An undrained oil filter can contain a full quart of used oil. Recycling used oil filters means that every last drop of the filter's steel, paper, oil, and plastic can have a new useful life.
Oro Loma residents will soon be able to recycle their used motor oil filters curbside, along with up to two gallons of used motor oil, on their regular garbage collection days (see accompanying article).