Recycled oil:
good for the environment and the wallet
Staff Writer
PRESQUE ISLE — Recycling is no longer limited to household products like milk jugs and newspapers; the process can now be found in the automotive maintenance world.
Whether you’re a do-it-yourself mechanic or take your vehicle to your favorite garage, gone are the days when an oil change left you searching for a place to dispose of the gooey, black stuff. Doing so often meant buying kitty litter and blending it with the used product in a garbage bag, then carting it off to the nearest landfill. Today, the task has been made much easier for both personal and professional mechanics, with several locations that will dispose of the waste for you.
In Presque Isle, the city’s Transfer Station has a designated site for collection, at no cost to the public.
“We’ve been collecting here since we opened,” said Louie Doucette, an employee at the station, located in the Industrial Park. “There’s no fee to dispose of used oil here.”
Like a growing number of companies and collection centers across the country, the Transfer Station puts the waste oil to good use.
“We use it for our waste oil furnace to heat the facility at the landfill,” Doucette explained.
Doucette said most of what is collected at the recycling center comes from individuals who’ve performed their own auto maintenance.
“They’re mostly home maintenance types — folks who buy and change their own oil,” he said.
Staff members take pride in helping individuals, often assisting in the disposal of the waste material.
“For those who don’t want their jugs back, we will dump the oil for them,” said Doucette.
In addition to saving taxpayers’ money by using the oil in the facility’s furnace, thus cutting heating expenses, the center also helps keep the waste oil and used containers from ending up in the wrong place.
“We’ll dump the oil for folks and then recycle the jugs. That way, we’re the ones getting dirty, not them, and everything gets recycled,” said Doucette.
One local business takes pride in the fact it too puts used oil to good use.
Charlie Michaud, service manager at Percy’s Auto Sales, located on the Houlton Road, said with oil changes recommended on most vehicles every 3,000 miles, that can add up to a lot of waste product, of varying kinds.
“Some folks change from 5-30 weight oil in the winter to 10-30 in the summer. We carry all weights of oil and use whatever the customer prefers. We use all kinds and have to dispose of all kinds,” said Michaud.
Like the city’s landfill facility, Percy’s also has a waste oil furnace and uses hundreds of gallons a year to heat their shop.
On average, we collect about 75 to 100 gallons a week. When you consider it takes a gallon and a half per change, it doesn’t take long to add up. Our shop is heated by waste oil, which saves the business money — savings we can pass on to the customer, since we’re able to keep prices competitive with the savings,” said Michaud.
Using the oil in their furnace also has helped the company save in other ways, he said.
“Companies used to go around and drain holding tanks — shops used to have to keep oil stored until it could be picked up — then once it was picked up, it was transported south for disposal. But the shop was responsible for anything that happened with that oil until it was disposed of on the other end,” said Michaud.
According to Michaud, garages used to have to pay for disposal and any liability issues that arose in the process. That’s no longer the case.
“We don’t have the cost of paying for disposal and the related liability — should they have an accident, for example, and the oil spilled. We no longer have that responsibility. Using it in our furnace eliminates those costs,” said Michaud.
For more information about the Transfer Station, contact 764-9393; or Percy’s, call 764-4493.
IT’S TIME TO CHANGE THE OIL and our methods of disposing of the black mess that drips from our oil pans. Jerry Klein, a service technician at Cowett’s Auto, located on the Fort Road in Presque Isle, is pictured preparing to change the oil in a customer’s SUV. Most automobile manufacturers recommend changing the oil in a vehicle every 3,000 miles. Disposal of used oil — once considered a problem by both do-it-yourselfers and professional mechanics — has now become a money-saving opportunity, with more and more locations putting the product to use in waste oil furnaces.
