Plastic Oil Bottle Recycling

Various oily wastes are generated while performing vehicle maintenance operations, including used oil drained from the engine, the oil filter, and even oil absorbent the is used to clean up oil that has spilled on the floor. At one time these wastes were placed in landfills. Concerns with oil from these waste migrating into surface and ground water has prompted a number state and federal regulatory agencies to restrict these materials from landfills. Unfortunately, one component from this process has been over looked - the ¿empty¿ plastic oil bottle. It has been shown that an ¿empty¿ one quart plastic bottle contains one to two ounces of oil. It has been estimated that 2,000,000,000 bottles are disposed on annually, the majority in sanitary landfills. An estimated 260,000,000 pounds of recyclable plastic and an estimated 16,000,000 gallons of recyclable oil are thrown away each year. CRI Recycling Service, Inc. has developed and commercialized a recycling technology that offers generators an environmentally acceptable alternative to deal with their solid oily wastes. Absorbents have been the major focus of this recycling effort. This patented technology uses liquefied gases as solvents to extract the oil for the absorbent materials allowing both the oil and absorbent to be recycled. The recovered oil is recycled internally as fuel oil and is sold for fuel or lube oil feedstock. Cleaned absorbents are returned to the generator for reuse. CRI proposed to extend the use of this technology to the problem of ¿Empty¿ plastic oil bottles. Similar to the absorbents, oil would be extracted from the plastic using a liquefied gas solvent allowing both the oil and cleaned plastic to be recycled. Target generators range form the ¿do-it-yourselfers¿ that periodically need to dispose of a handful of bottle to ¿quick change¿ oil facilities, auto mechanics and auto parts stores that may need to dispose of a much larger quantity. Community involvement would be encouraged to participate in this effort by setting up central collection stations where generators could deposit their ¿empty¿ bottles.