I'm not in favor of this kind of law but I've also seen shade-tree mechanics show a complete disregard for the environment: dumping oil into the dirt, releasing freon into the atmosphere, etc.
This is still illegal most places regardless of where you do your service. All auto parts stores (in California at least) let you drop off as much oil as you want for free and they dispose of it. Some Autozones will give you an empty container to transport the oil back to them (if you ask).
> releasing freon into the atmosphere
A/C systems are closed, so unless you have a leak, it shouldn’t ever make contact with the outside. Even DIY tools to “recharge” it have special one-way connector valves that connect directly to the one-way connection valve on the A/C system. We’ve come a long away in this tech.
> This is still illegal
But not enforced because you're not going to catch someone pouring oil over a fence on their own property into a bunch of weeds at night.
> transport the oil
The shit gets everywhere. No thanks. They know they can go to autozone or leave it in a clear plastic container, but that's extra work. I'm not sure people realize just how little free time blue collar folk have.
> it shouldn’t ever make contact with the outside
Pulling the A/C unit out to lighten the car for the dragstrip. Why bother renting an A/C reclaiming machine when I can just open the valve and let it vent?
Again, I'm not saying people shouldn't be allowed to work on cars, but trying to ignore the real environmental dangers here is burying your head in the sand.
The question is: what ought to be done about this? I don't think a blanket ban on other than "minor car repairs" is it, but I also don't think the type of person you're talking about here is going to be too fazed by fines and inspectors.
I think if you banned all automotive work at home (including oil changes) that would reduce the amount of environmental damage like this. It's far easier to catch someone changing oil than dumping it. However there are obvious socioeconomic reasons why I don't think this is something that should be done.
I'm not proposing a solution, I'm just pointing out we shouldn't ignore the environment here. Or expect poor people to care about the environment because they very much do not. I know the people that do this and if I challenged them on it they would say "the government pours oil on their own gravel roads to keep the dust down anyways" or "if the government cared about the environment they wouldn't have killed Stanley Meyer" or some other claim to point out perceived hypocrisy.
I'm completely against this. You're expecting poor people to pay for things they can do themselves if they're willing just because a few people dump oil in their weeds at night. Your freon argument doesn't sway me either. Wrecks cause freon dumps all the time. Your neighbor pulling freon out of one car isn't causing that much environment damage.
Also: if you're concerned about it, report them.
Sure, and if you banned all alcohol consumption, then that will reduce the amount of kids damaged by alcohol.[1]
Still doesn't mean that banning is an idea worthy of consideration.
[1] The negative effects of alcohol on a population is far worse than many other things that are banned, and yet alcohol is not. Many things would get immediately unbanned if the bar was "needs to be more damaging than alcohol"
I don’t see how someone sees one thing wrong with an activity and go “yeah let’s ban the whole thing”
That doesn't work with motor oil for a number of reasons. It can burn off, new engines don't come with any oil, etc.
> I don’t see how someone sees one thing wrong with an activity and go “yeah let’s ban the whole thing”
Scroll up and see what my initial post was and you'll see this is the direct opposite of my position from the beginning.
This is very rare in the grand scheme of things and the most common case is simply to recharge a line that had a slow leak. Both the valve that allows you inject coolant on the A/C system and the valve on the pressurized can are one-way by default. Yes, a little get leaked every time you do this because there is a void between where the valve attaches to the pressurized can, but this is all about trade offs.
If your A/C is leaking, you can usually fix it as it’s usually just a brittle gasket or a flare connection became loose over time. Most people I’ve helped have vacuumed out their refrigerant before disassembling so they can simply pump it back in. Why pay for new coolant if you can borrow the vacuum tool for free and just use what you got already? Yes, I’m sure some people just open the valve and let it rip, but most undertaking this repair at least watch a few YouTube videos.
Unfortunately AC repair shops generally price gouge. I've seen shops charge > $100 just to evacuate a system for you, which is just hooking it up to their (admittedly very expensive) recovery machine for a couple minutes. Take the car back to have it filled again with about 4x $6 cans of refrigerant and they'll charge $200+ to once again hook it up to their machine for about 20 minutes. Ask them to diagnose your busted AC system and they'll inevitably tell you the evap coil is leaking and it's a $2k+ repair because of the 15 hours of labor involved in removing and reinstalling your entire dash. Go home and follow some youtube directions and find out it was really just a leaking oring on the condenser.
It's no wonder people do these repairs at home. Maybe the fix is for the auto industry to move to a less harmful refrigerant and design their AC systems in ways that don't require them to be disassembled for various unrelated repair work.
I think 1234yf is supposed to be a lot better. I'm not sure what the adoption rate is, though.
It's the same reason people pay more for products that are ethically sources.
That said I think the prices are crazy and would be lower if the financial burden of running a "legit" shop weren't so high.
I agree that refrigerants need to be safer, but it’s not my experience that people who are relying on their cars to literally survive are going to just pop the refrigerant valve and let it rip.
If this is the goal, it's really backward as it is only loosely related.
It's similar to blaming single use straws for the plastic problem.
In the end a lot of stuff is still caused by 8 billion insignificancies..
And imo also this straw (strawman) argument has been exaggerated. Yes, it is also a tiny and mostly insignificant bit, but where was it blamed to be the root cause of the plastic problem? It is another tiny simple thing one can just avoid without much personal luxury impact, so where is the problem? Trying to draw that into ridicule like this not much better, imo.
Used oil has value!
I do the same with my apple tree trimmings.
Highjacking planes is illegal but we still don't allow guns and bombs on planes, it makes it easier to enforce.
Risk mitigation is a part of public policy.
https://www.tsa.gov/travel/transporting-firearms-and-ammunit...
Somehow, we are all still alive. (He did stop doing that eventually).
is there a well nearby?
how is the soil layering and composition?
microbial activity?
how deep is the water table?
is there a body of water nearby? (where the drain water runs)
is the drain water treated in a plant? (is the treatment biological or chemical)
and so and so forth
The results can range from "no problem at all, the oil will sit undisturbed for hundreds of years and clean it self up" to "end up straight where it kills somethings".
Anyway, it occurred to me that oil change is probably on its way to become a historical footnote. Barring specalised applications, all motor vehicals will be electric probably, adoption seems to have reached a tipping point.
I guess I’m one of the crazies who would bet against this happening in my lifetime at least. The problems with grid capacity for scaling up electric vehicles, their unsuitability for long uninterrupted trips, lack of towing performance, etc., seem well-covered enough that the notion of no new ice vehicles seems like a bright-eyed futurist pipe dream at this point. Could it happen some day? Sure, but the futurist’s problem is all about timing, not direction.
Grid capacity maybe. It would help if people stopped buying massively oversized vehicles for their actual everyday use in general. (But overall I'm fairly optimistic that EVs can be accounted for.)
Majority of trips don’t exceed the capabilities of a Smart car. My CPU goes mostly unused. We don’t size for even the mean, but the realistically conceivable max (capability or capacity).
> Grid capacity
We struggle to support the demand for air conditioning and actively ask people to reduce their demand on the grid. Increasing demand by orders of magnitude seems inconceivable without a radical increase in generating capacity, which imposes a huge time constraint at the very least.
Again, I’m not arguing the direction, mostly just that the timeframe which to me seems a lot, lot longer than the popular representations.
Correct, that's why I drive a Smart car.
Buyers tend to buy for multiple uses. Their vast majority of trips may be in the range of current EVs, but they still wouldn't purchase a car that can't do 1 trip out of every 30.
https://afdc.energy.gov/data/mobile/10318
I wish this data was segmented further, because 30 miles each way is no problem for an EV! But still, a longer trip doesn't mean you can't make the trip - especially with the number of fast chargers increasing, it just means you have to stop to charge a bit longer than if you'd stopped for gas.
(But as an aside, I really wish car share systems were more common in the US. It feels silly to have everyone driving around in oversized vehicles when they're only occasionally needed.)
So? It doesn't have to apply to most people, it just has to apply to many, and judging from the number of trailers that are sold, and aftermarket towbars that are installed, many people actually do intend to use their car for towing.
Those are very temporary problems. I would be very surprised if EVs don't end up outperforming ICEVs on all those metrics within a decade or two, and that's a pretty conservative estimate.
The weight of the battery to actually move goods very quickly becomes a major issue.
Granted that’s in part because EV trucks are allowed to be 2000 lbs heavier than ICE trucks in the US.
https://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Oil-Eating_Bacteria...
"I'm not in favour of banning alcohol, but I've also seen how easily minors acquire it".
So? That's an argument for enforcing current law, not implementing a complete ban.
When I said "I'm not in favor of this kind of law", I literally meant that. I'm not in favor of a complete ban: full stop. You're arguing as if I have the opposite position.
I'm saying the environmental costs are real. That doesn't mean that I therefore think that there should be a complete ban, simply that there are real costs that we need to be mindful of. Socioeconomic costs outweigh the environment here, IMO.
I think if you read my comments again with this in mind you'll find you're not actually disagreeing with my real position.
Imagine if you had written:
> I've seen shade-tree mechanics show a complete disregard for the environment, but I'm not in favor of this kind of law.
It seems like you think that's the same sentence as before but to me, and I suspect other readers, they say different things.