Two ambassadors from the B.C. Oil Management Program were in town last Tuesday, to educate and raise awareness about the importance of recycling used oil materials at registered recycling centres. There are two such centres in Golden, one at Columbia Diesel at 911 11th Ave. North and another at the Petro Canada Bulk Oil Station at 820 10th Ave. North.

Students of Communications at Simon Fraser University, Amy Cheung and her partner Linnaea Wiseman were hired by Grey Vancouver, a Public Relations company, to travel across the province in a hybrid Toyota Prius on an awareness campaign for the B.C. Used Oil Management Program, visiting recycling centres in cities and towns along the way. “We’re encouraging residents to recycle their used oil and to realize the benefits of doing so,” said Cheung. Not many people know, she said, that just one drop of oil can contaminate up to a million drops of clean water.

Cheung said the two facilities they visited in Golden were doing well in terms of their recycling programs. Ladine Salsbury of the Petro Canada Bulk Oil Station said their program has been in place for years, and has been quite successful. “We take used oil, pails, and plastic - free of charge - and a company from Cranbrook picks them up to recycle them at their plant. The program’s become more popular since we put advertising up in our windows for it.”

Cheung explained how the oil recycling program can operate free of charge. An Environmental Handling Charge is levied on all oil products, 5 cents a litre on new oil and 50 cents on every new oil filter, which goes solely to fund the collection of used oil, filters, and containers at 520 collection centres across the province. While the Used Oil Recycling program was started in 2003, the ambassador program has only been in place for a few years. Their aim, said Cheung, is to try to reduce the roughly 18 million litres of recyclable oil that is still not collected by the program each year in British Columbia.

New this year, the ambassadors are also spreading awareness of two other recycling programs, the Post Consumer Pharmaceutical Stewardship Association’s (PCPSA) Medications Return Program, which encourages people to take back their used medications and medical materials to registered pharmacies, and the Product Care program, which encourages the recycling of hazardous household materials like paint, gasoline, flammable solvents, and pesticides.

To learn more about hazardous materials recycling in B.C., visit www.usedoilrecycling.com or www.productcare.org.