How Not To

Step 13 Do Your Own Oil Change and Poison Mother Earth

This is a picture of a bucket of old crankcase oil from someone changing oil in their car.
"So what?" you say?
You've just put yourself on the wrong team. Team Earth Poisoner.
It's going to rain. The rain falls in the bucket. Oil floats on water.
The oil spills out onto the ground.
Result: You just dumped your car's oil all over the ground.
You could have done that without making this nice bucket and the stuff under it all dirty also.
The right way to get rid of the oil is to put it in a closed container, write "used oil" on it, and leave it in front of a mechanic's shop in the dead of night while wearing a mask.
They have a tank to dump this stuff in and it's no problem for them.

You say "Please explain how I accidentally poisoned mother earth? Again?"
Oil floats on water. So if you leave a bucket of drain oil from an automobile oil change in the rain, the rain water sinks to the bottom and the oil pours over the top. If the oil has a lot of additives there will be some mixing and you'll get some brownish-grey petro-mayonnaise in your oil spill as well.

My pet peeves include: Other people. They're always doing something wrong.

Because I see this method of disposing of oil so much, I conclude that it doesn't take much technical expertise to change one's own oil. And that not every cheapskate bastard shares my values.

I haven't seen this behavior in poor countries. I think they save the oil and do ingenious things with it.

Comments

[jaballard]

And some of us just plain dont care, I dont, I do dispose of it properly, but in the past, I may have thought "dont need a container just dig a hole!" or i will burn it.

[NightGod]

Finding a place to accept used motor oil is very easy, no midnight runs required. Call around a bit, many garages (especially those at car dealerships) will accept used oil. I know every Auto Zone will accept it as long as it's obviously personal quantities (I've gone in with 15 quarts before and they took it without protest, they just record your driver's license info so they can see how often you show up).

[lukeyj15]

you could burn the oil

[kagenin]

Which would take all the carbon in the oil and release it into the atmosphere. Which would still put you on the wrong team.

[livesteamfan]

Does it matter?

[Kryptonite]

Yes.

[Hycro]

Our mechanic has an oil furnace for his shop, and after dad or I change our car's oil, we give it to the mechanic, because instead of buying new oil to burn, he uses old motor oil, it's a kind of recycling when you think of it, taking a waste product and using it to your benefit, overall, using the old motor oil is probably better for the environment than using the new furnace oil, since that oil has to be drilled, transported to a processing facility, transported to a holding facility, then transported to the end-user...this way, he cuts out all that transporting and refining, and drilling...

[Kryptonite]

If it's used for something else, then that's good. I would go into details but with this keyboard it makes it hard, sorry.

[kagenin]

Many garbage dumps and some recycling places accept (and properly discard or reprocess) used car oil, which is where the mechanic probably takes it. But yeah, putting it in a bucket and leaving it in the rain is just plain stupid.

[Grey_Wolfe]

"My pet peeves include: Other people. They're always doing something wrong." HA. This has become my new slogan.

[Darth_Reese]

My dad changes the oil in our cars and he puts the used oil in a bucket, then puts new oil in the car, and last of all he puts the old oil in the container that the new oil comes in, and screws the lid on.

[Rishnai]

There's a whole corner of my yard where some smartass former owner apparently poured large quantities of something toxic. Weeds don't even grow. Moral of the story: don't piss off everyone who will EVER own or get near that spot. Don't pour your oil in the corner.