{"id":6678,"date":"2012-01-20T17:14:01","date_gmt":"2012-01-20T21:14:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/?p=6678"},"modified":"2012-01-20T17:14:01","modified_gmt":"2012-01-20T21:14:01","slug":"whats-your-number","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/2012\/01\/20\/whats-your-number\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s your number?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post contributed by Nadine Lymn, ESA Director of Public Affairs<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/strong>Many of us still operate under the notion that, as responsible car owners, we should get our vehicle\u2019s oil changed every 3,000 miles to keep our engines running smoothly.\u00a0 But it turns out that this engrained wisdom is not true if you own a vehicle that is about ten years old or younger.\u00a0 Newer car models have cleaner-running engines and usually only need oil changes every 5,000 to 10,000 miles.<\/p>\n

In addition to saving money and time, the main reason this is important is because of how much oil is unnecessarily wasted and also contributes to water pollution by people who incorrectly dispose of oil\u00a0 filters.<\/p>\n

An article in February\u2019s Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment<\/em> by Robin Meadows reports on this topic and on a recent survey administered by California\u2019s Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle<\/a>).\u00a0 The survey revealed that about half of all non-commercial drivers in the Golden State change their motor oil much too frequently.<\/p>\n

And while most of us are responsible\u2014according to the article, 80 percent of used motor oil is recycled in the U.S.\u2014the remaining 20 percent is not disposed of properly, ending up contaminating water.\u00a0 According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 40 percent of the pollution in U.S. streams, rivers, and lakes is from motor oil.<\/p>\n

The CalRecycle survey also showed that many of us don\u2019t bother looking up the recommended oil change frequency in our car manuals.\u00a0 To raise awareness and encourage better practices, CalRecycle has started a campaign called Check Your Number<\/a>. \u00a0As described in the Frontiers<\/em> article: \u201cRelated kick-off events entailed giving free parking spots in crowded venues to drivers who check their owner\u2019s manuals and display the recommended oil-change intervals on their windshields.\u201d<\/p>\n

CalRecycle hopes to next focus on do-it-yourselfers who don\u2019t properly dispose of oil filters.<\/p>\n

Photo credit: CalRecycle<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post contributed by Nadine Lymn, ESA Director of Public Affairs Many of us still operate under the notion that, as responsible car owners, we should get our vehicle\u2019s oil changed every 3,000 miles to keep our engines running smoothly.\u00a0 But it turns out that this engrained wisdom is not true if you own a vehicle that is about ten…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1038,1353,93,665,1354,57,1060,778,22,779],"class_list":["post-6678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservation","tag-california","tag-calrecycle","tag-epa","tag-oil","tag-oil-changes","tag-pollution","tag-recycling","tag-streams","tag-water","tag-water-pollution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6678\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}