Do you recycle empty oil quarts?

[l008com]

I used to pour my used oil back in to them and bring them to Autozone. Due to spillage and oil burning, I'd often have an empty quart that never saw any dirty oil. I'd bring them too, thinking they did something special with them. The guy said they just throw the bottles away once they dump out the used oil.

So now I have an oil pan that holds oil, so my empty quarts never see dirty used oil. What do you do with them? I'd like to recycle them. And they are marked for recycling. But you can't recycle plastic with motor oil residue on them, even clean oil residue. I could in theory scrub them, although then i'd have some real dirty water to get rid of. Is there any sane way to recycle these things or does everyone just trash em?

 

[Blckshdw]

I pour the dirty oil back into mine, and take them to a nearby repair shop for recycling, since they also take the other fluids. The AZ by me said they wouldn't take coolant or gear oil last time I asked them. Never bothered to ask what they did with the old containers, figured there was some protocol for them, but maybe not?

 

[Sparky]

I pitch them. Nobody will recycle them because of what they contained.

 

[Mooseman]

My city's recycling says to toss them in the garbage, as well as the drained oil filters.

I tend to use gallon/4 litre containers, which is usually cheaper and makes it easier to take to my local lube place, and less containers.

 

[PProph]

My city has a Shred/Recycling place that takes everything, they have a little outbuilding with some drums that you empty whatever into and containers for empties. They probably also just throw them out but at least I've done what I can with them.

 

[Drec]

In the King County area where we used to live, surrounding Seattle, they were into recycling, but now it seems that most of the recycling goes into the landfills. Now that we moved, they don't seem to recycle very much in the new area that we live in, just aluminum cans and cardboard. Everything else goes into the trash.

 

[HARDTRAILZ]

I toss them in the trash

 

[christo829]

Our nearby landfill has a place where we can recycle old oil, antifreeze, etc. Big bins there just for the containers, so I add them to the pile. I used to drop old oil at the nearby service station, and any containers I had left over I'd clean out and put them in the recycle bin until I found the landfill solution . Switching to the larger container like Mooseman did at least cut down on the number of containers I'm juggling.

Cheers-

Chris

 

[DocBrown]

Trash unfortunately. The city doesn't consider them recyclable. We have a dump that does take the oil though. I have several 5 gal. containers that I store it in until they are all full, then pour them out in the big tank at the dump. Which reminds me, they are all full now...

 

[JerryIrons]

They go in the trash here in western ny as well, unfortunately, cannot recycle these. And from the talk about recycyling costing more money nowadays, it looks like everything will be going in the trash at some point in the future.

As for the oil, the local mechanic who does my inspections has an oil furnace in his shop, and he takes all oil, gear oil, power steering fluid, transmission fluid, and even oil that I use for making homeade chicken wings in the deep fryer. Interesting topic, I was curious how it works in the rest of the country.

 

[BrianF]

Burn barrel.