Italy’s Model for Waste Oil Regeneration

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An old-school Italian mechanic repairing an engine in Bolzano. ©RGB Pictures / shutterstock

Italy is the European Union’s leading collector and regenerator of waste oil, said the head of the country’s waste oil consortium at an environmental event on Tuesday. Its long-established legislative framework and collection network means that almost all waste oil is collected and recycled at no cost to the producer.

The collection of used oil is included in the EU Waste Framework Directive. Rates of collection vary greatly across the bloc because of a lack of enforcement and undefined collection and regeneration targets, according to the GEIR, Europe’s umbrella association for rerefiners. The EU average is 61% of collected waste oil is regenerated rather than incinerated.

There are 28 plants treating waste oil across Europe, of which 17 produce 400,000 metric tons per year of lubricating oil.

Established in 1982, members of the National Consortium of Used Oils, Conou, collects and regenerates almost all used mineral oil from about 105,000 workshops and industry sites around the country. Italy enacted its first law regarding the recovery of used mineral oils in 1940.

“It is the result of an extraordinary organizational model that was born 40 years ago from the cooperation between companies, mainly lubricant oil companies, based on the idea that ‘who pollutes pays’, which later became the producer’s responsibility,” Piunti told Adnkronos, an Italian news outlet and organizer of the event.

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