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The 3,000 Mile Oil
Change
This is a well established
standard in North America for our cars and
trucks. There are many of us who see to it
religiously. The rest of us get to when we get
to it! What would happen if everyone changed
their oil in their car when they were supposed
to? Most people do it already. But can you
imagine the amount of pollution, and money
spent, time wasted, just on this one simple
chore of vehicle maintenance?
The following in a little
slice of life in Newburgh, NY. It's not a large
town by any means, which makes my point even
more important...
In our local city of Newburgh, NY, there
is a population of approx. 30,000.
Let's say that there is one car for each 3
people. That would be approximately 10,000 cars.
Now lets establish some experimental parameters:
- 4 oil
changes per year (12,000 miles per year
@3,000 miles per oil change)
- Each car would
contain approx. 5 qts. (1.25 US gal.)
- Each quart of
oil costs an average of $2.99
- Each oil
change costs $20
- An oil filter
weighs approx. 1 lb.
- 1 barrel from
OPEC or wherever is equal to 42 US gallons
-Each oil change
takes approx. 30 min. of time, plus 10 min. of
travel time each way, using a total of 50
minutes of time (optimistic at best)
-You travel 5
miles each way (10 miles total) to get to the
garage... using .5 gal of fuel at $3 per gallon,
@20 mpg: fuel wasted is $1.5.
Each year in our small US city that
translates to:
*$800,000 in oil changes
*200,000 qts. (1,190 barrels) of oil
consumed; ($59,800 in oil)
*200,000 qts. of waste oil created.
*See
ATSDR or
Amsoil
is green
*Almost 4 years of
time are wasted away
*60,000 gallons of fuel are
used just for 'to and from' ($180,000 worth!)
*20 tons of additional waste
from filters that contain hazardous used oil.
That is just OUR little
town. You could only imagine NewYork City, LA,
Miami, or any large populous. We waste a
tremendous amount of resources, just by
ourselves.
From a different aspect:
Where do you think this oil is coming from?
Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Russia, and Libya to name
a few. |