Waste Not- Want Not

A while back The White House announced plans to curb our use of oil. There is a painless way we can all help this effort. I visited two auto repair/oil change shops in the last month. Both recommend I change oil every 3000 miles. I checked the owner's manual in each of my vehicles and see that the manufacture recommends a change at 5000 miles for "normal" duty. In doing further research I found that the oil change industry has a broader definition of severe duty, which calls for 3000-mile oil change interval. In 2005 Dept of transportation estimated there were 143 million autos in the US. If only 10% unnecessarily use the 3000 mile interval instead of 5000 miles. It would mean over 42 million unnecessary oil changes a year.

My last oil change cost $30.00, so that would be almost $1.2 Billion wasted. Not to mention over 80 million barrels of crude oil. A study in California suggests that 75% of car owners change their oil too soon. If that were the case for all of the USA it would mean that about 550 million barrels of crude oil are being waisted each year. That's almost 10% of the annual US consumption of oil. Beside the consumption problem, there is the huge amount of waist oil that is generated. Less then half of waist oil is recycle