YOUNG, Sask. – Farmers have salvaged 42,700 litres of used oil in Saskatchewan’s first oil recycling project.
“You just can’t dump it behind the sheds to keep the weeds down,” said Bruce Elke, a past ADD board technician.
Farmers on the ADD board, a rural agriculture development agency, were concerned with the amount of used oil on farms, especially with new and bigger farm machinery.
Elke said more attention to the problem is necessary since there is an increasing emphasis on the environment.
Fail an audit
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Many banks require an environmental audit of farmland before agriculture loans will be given. Elke said he knows of some farmers who have been turned down for farmland loans because the land failed the audit.
“If you can get people to store and dispose of the oil properly you can curtail the problem,” he said.
With this in mind, the ADD board got a federal grant through the green plan and set up the oil collection tanks.
There are six tanks, one in each rural municipality around this central Saskatchewan town.
Farmers bring the oil and used filters to the site. A Regina company collects the oil from the tanks and turns it into diesel fuel. The used oil filters are taken to IPSCO steel mill to reuse the steel.
About 1,000 farmers in the area have used the service.
Elke said he’s not sure how much oil is stored on farms. Many farmers refused to answer an ADD board survey because they were worried about where the information would be used.
“The guys were scared what we’d do with the information.”
