Clean Water

By recycling your used motor oil you keep it out of rivers, lakes, streams and even your ground water. In many cases that means keeping it out of your drinking water, off our beaches and away from wildlife.

Recycling the motor oil from one oil change protects a million gallons of drinking water - or a year’s supply for 50 people.

Save Energy and a Resource

Motor oil doesn’t wear out – it just gets dirty. As it circulates through your engine it picks up a variety of contaminants and becomes dirty or used and needs to be replaced. If you are one of the millions of do-it-yourselfers who drops off your oil at a collections center or uses curbside pickup you are conserving energy for future generations.

If one gallon of used motor oil is reprocessed and burned as fuel, it will generate enough electricity to power everything in your home for a day.

Recycling Used Oil – How Does That Work?

Used motor oil can be reprocessed into fuel that warms your home in the winter and cools it in the summer. It can be burned in furnaces for heat, or in power plants to generate electricity for homes, schools and businesses. Processed motor oil can also be used in industrial burners, mixed with asphalts for paving, or blended for marine fuels.

Used motor oil can be re-refined into lubricating oils that meets the same certification and specifications as new or virgin motor oil thus conserving energy resources for the future.

THERE’S A WIN-WIN BENEFIT TO REUSING YOUR OIL!

The Salinas Valley Solid Waste Authority, in conjunction with Santa Cruz and San Benito Counties and the Cities of Watsonville and Santa Cruz, has implemented a regional Used Oil Pollution Prevention Program.

As a result of a $600,000 state grant the five agencies have been able to offer services to residents and business throughout the tri-county area in an effort to prevent used oil pollution.

PUBLIC OUTREACH AND EDUCATION COMPONENTS OF THE PROGRAM INCLUDE:

• Collection of used oil at various multi-family residential complexes.
• Educational outreach to seasonal labor camps, priority fixed-income neighborhoods and multi-family residential complexes.
• Promote the use of re-refined motor oil through fleet conversion, racetrack promotion, production of a video targeting agriculture businesses throughout the region and a coupon incentive program for residents.
• Promote the location of agriculture oil collection centers throughout the tri-county area.

Through this program and others like it, the Authority will continue to offer better oil recycling services to residents and businesses in the tri-county area to prevent discarded used motor oil from polluting the coastline and groundwater.