Oil Recycling Plants

• In the United States each year, automotive oil changes generate hundreds of millions of gallons of used motor oil. If improperly disposed of, used oil can pollute our lakes and rivers. To combat this problem as well as reduce our nation's dependence on foreign oil imports, several companies have built oil "re-refineries" with the capability and technology to completely recycle used motor oil back into perfectly serviceable "new" motor oil, which can be put right back into the same cars and trucks it was drained from. Best of all, re-refining used oil generates fewer greenhouse gas emissions than refining raw crude.

Safety-Kleen

• Safety-Kleen operates two re-refining facilities in North America. One is in Ontario, Canada, and the other is in Indiana. Together, these two plants return more than 140 million gallons of used motor oil to the marketplace. As the average car or light truck requires about 6 quarts of oil, it is enough oil to perform about 187 million oil changes. A barrel of crude oil equals 44 gallons, so re-refining the used oil creates the equivalent of 3.2 million barrels of raw crude. Safety-Kleen also manufactures EcoPower motor oil from re-refined oil.

Evergreen Oil

• At its used oil re-refinery in Newark, California, Evergreen Oil produces three quarts of re-refined light neutral base oil and mid-range neutral base oil from every gallon of used motor oil it takes in. The company boasts that the purity of its re-refined oil is so high, that it is blended into name-brand motor oil by major U.S. oil companies as well as independent lubricant blending operations. Other by-products of Evergreen's re-refining operation include asphalt flux, which is used in the paving industry along with various other "light-end" petroleum distillates. Evergreen's re-refinery is the only one located in the western United States.

Universal Lubricants

• The re-refining facility operated by Universal Lubricants is near the company's headquarters in Wichita, Kansas. According to the company's website, the re-refinery produces "group II base lubestock," which it blends into the products sold under the Universal Eco Ultra brand name. These include automotive oils in a wide range of viscosities, hydraulic oils and automatic transmission fluid. According to the company, each of these products has been licensed by the American Petroleum Institute, and they meet all Society of Automotive Engineers requirements.