That 1-liter bottle of oil isn’t going to stay a solid well contained, sealed bottle after it gets crushed by a trash compactor in the garbage truck.
I’m not going to dox myself so I’ll admit that I probably send about 10 gallons of used oil to the dump every year now. I maintain several old vehicles and I also do a couple of oil changes for friends. And in my town, I know about five guys that do about the same.
The municipal dump is often designed to mitigate bacterial contaminants. The site is probably lined with some sort of plastic or rubber barriers to contain and control waste water and either treat it or evaporate it all and turn everything to solid waste.
The thing with used oil is that it reacts with rubber and plastics … it will break down those barriers over time if enough oil and similar chemicals get into the waste and percolate down to the rubber/plastic layer. Once those barriers are compromised, all the waste water chemical or bacterial and everything is now free to travel down to the ground water system which can affect water for miles around, depending on the geology and location. It can even tap into a local river, stream or lake and make the problem worse.
You’re really making me think about sending those bottles of oil to the dump … I’ll probably stop that and think of getting rid of the oil some other way now. I was just doing it to be lazy … now that you’ve made me think about it more, I should figure out a different solution.
That 1-liter bottle of oil isn’t going to stay a solid well contained, sealed bottle after it gets crushed by a trash compactor in the garbage truck.
I’m not going to dox myself so I’ll admit that I probably send about 10 gallons of used oil to the dump every year now. I maintain several old vehicles and I also do a couple of oil changes for friends. And in my town, I know about five guys that do about the same.
The municipal dump is often designed to mitigate bacterial contaminants. The site is probably lined with some sort of plastic or rubber barriers to contain and control waste water and either treat it or evaporate it all and turn everything to solid waste.
The thing with used oil is that it reacts with rubber and plastics … it will break down those barriers over time if enough oil and similar chemicals get into the waste and percolate down to the rubber/plastic layer. Once those barriers are compromised, all the waste water chemical or bacterial and everything is now free to travel down to the ground water system which can affect water for miles around, depending on the geology and location. It can even tap into a local river, stream or lake and make the problem worse.
You’re really making me think about sending those bottles of oil to the dump … I’ll probably stop that and think of getting rid of the oil some other way now. I was just doing it to be lazy … now that you’ve made me think about it more, I should figure out a different solution.