More Recycling

Most of us have them and they produce waste, so what are they? engines.

All engines require lubrication and this is done using oil, there are also many other components which use oil and these range from gearboxes to axles on many vehicles and engines on other things such as petrol mowers and even generators, so what do you do with your old engine oil when you replace it? in many cases people recycle it (or so they think) by placing it all into one container and taking it to the tip and dropping it into their waste oil tank, but what happens next.

In 90% of cases this oil isn't actually recycled as it is sold to industry as a cheap fuel where it is burned; so you are giving your old oil to a tip who is profiting from your donation by selling it to industry which uses it to make numerous products which they sell back to you for a profit, seeing the scam here, and generally it is burned in high temperature operations requiring long periods of high temperatures such as the production of cement for example, so it isn't actually recycled at all although it is perfectly possible to recycle this waste oil into new oil at a cheaper price then extracting and cracking new crude oil.

What can we do with it? actually you can recycle it yourself and get a financial benefit for yourself if you know how, and if you have wooden fence panels, garages, fence posts, or any solid wooden product outside then you can do this easily. Water based wood treatments are rubbish and their sole intention is to suck money out of you as they have a short life which is intended to make you replace your timber products on a more frequent basis, and as water based fence coatings are merely paint and nothing more, but they come in a range of pretty colours to make them more attractive to buyers and the media who actively promote these products.

Why is this important to know? because since the banning of creosote to the domestic consumer markets on an alleged environmental ideology has done nothing for the environment as traditional wooden structures only lasy for a fraction of the time and need replacing more frequently and this means to supply this demand, more trees have to be cut down, shipped around the world, and manufactured into replacement products which causes much more pollution than a bit of creosote ever did, and here is the scam.
If you prefer the traditional oil based wood treatments then you are stuffed, but as creosote can be used in unlimited fashion by industry there is a clear disparity, and look how long wooden structures covered in creosote have lasted, 50 years? 75 years? and some have lasted over 100 years without issues, and the Eurocrats making this legislation seem to be concerned about ground contamination killing your fuchsias and geranuims but no concerns about farmers using it and covering acres of ground they are growing your food in, or crops for beast feeds, go figure.

Think about it in financial terms for a minute, switch to a spirit based timber coating which soaks into your timber and preserves it from the inside and for a cheap brand you are looking around £20 per 5 litre can and for a quality brand this is doubled to £40 or more for a 5 litre can, so make your own and to do this you have one of the raw materials which is engine oil, and you need to break this down using a cheap product and this can be white spirit which is espensive, or cheap gun wash cellulose thinners at around £7 per 5 litre tin from motor paint factors, or around £20 for a 25 litre drum.

Making your own wood treatment: take a 5 litre oil container and fill with 4 litres of old engine oil, add 1 litre of your gun wash thinners and shake vigorously for a couple of minutes and leave to stand, shake regularly and stand overnight and you have 5 litres of quality wood treatment for £1.40 and you have recycled your old engine oil.
If you are doing fence panels then remove the panels and coat all the unseen edges with repeated coats as the wood will suck it up like a prostitute on bonus if your panels have had a couple of weeks of sunshine on them and no rain and you will be surprised at how mush this dry wood absorbs and if you have reinforcing pieces nailed to your fence and you cannot get behind them then get a length of square profile guttering and one end cap, stand the fence panel in the guttering, which is stood on blocks, and tip your wood preserver over the offending pieces and literally soak it, and collect anything running into your gutter in a container placed under the open end of your gutter and reuse it.