Crushed Filters | Draining Filter

As fuel prices climb, people are doing more and more of their preventative maintenance work.  Things like oil changes, for instance, are a good way to save money. Just make sure that you do it properly: raise the car in a safe manner and dispose of the leftover products the way you’re supposed to.

Now the oil filter, that’s certainly a problem. It has to be drained before it can be thrown away, and that means one of two things has to happen: either you place it in a drain pan bottom-side-up like we’ve done here and allow it to sit there and drain for a minimum of twelve hours, or you go to a recycling center where they use an oil-filter crusher such as we have here.


Filter Crusher

This actually crushes the oil filter and squeezes all the residual oil out of it, making it safe to go into the landfill.

All of these products, everything that you’re going to use, need to be recycled.  The antifreeze needs to be recycled.  Anything that you take out of the car has to be disposed of properly.  And remember that one gallon of oil can contaminate up to a million gallons of fresh water. It’s pretty nasty stuff!  Now, if you want more information, contact Earth 9-1-1 or see the instructions on the label of lots of bottles of oil for help.

And don’t forget batteries.  Everybody thinks of batteries as being pretty harmless, but in reality they have lead, they have sulfuric acid, and they’re nasty! You need to recycle them properly.

And here’s something that you might find interesting…due to a loop-hole in the law, you can buy R-134a refrigerant.  Now that doesn’t mean that you’re licensed to handle it or to recharge an air conditioning system.  Anything that comes out of an air conditioning system has to be captured and recycled, and to capture it and recycle it you need a piece of machinery you’re not likely to have, so technically you can’t legally service your air conditioning system because you have no way to deal with the refrigerant that comes out of it.  So we really need to take care of the environment and to do that we all have to play our part in recycling these things that come out of our cars.



If you have a question or comment, write to me.
The address is MotorWeek, Owings Mills, MD, 21117.