Waste oil management in developed countries and current state of Turkey

Human being makes an effort for more convenient and modern life. With the technologicaland industrial developments and population growth, the use of oil and petroleum products hasincreased dramatically. Besides, natural resource depletion, continuous waste production andecological destruction have become life threatening for human life. Waste stack, pollutedrivers, dead soils and polluted air are the results of this situation.In Turkey, approximately 400.000 tons of mineral oil is consumed per year and estimatedwaste oil production is 200.000 tons per year. With the Regulation on Control of Waste Oils,which is implemented within the harmonization process between Turkey and EuropeanUnion, waste oil quota system came into force in January 2004. According to the officialrecords in 2004, only 3.341 tons of waste oil had been collected out of 15.340 tons waste oilthat must have been collected.In this research, waste oil models in developed countries and the state of Turkey were studiedwithin the context of waste oil management. This study includes oil types and waste oilcharacteristics, regeneration technologies and applications in France, Germany, Italy, UnitedKingdom and Greece. Waste oil management in this countries were analyzed and Turkey?sdeficiencies in implementation were stated. In this context, this study shows that there is nopublic awereness on waste oil management in Turkey and it is necessary to start inventorystudies in order to set up a database, to expand collection-transportation organizationnationwide and to determine necessary arrangements in regeneration plants.Keywords: Waste oil, waste oil management, waste oil collection, waste oil transportation,waste oil recycling, EU implementations in EU, current state of Turkey