A non-profit organization (NPO), the Rose Foundation has set a goal to ensure that all available used lubricating oil and related waste is collected, recycled and managed in an environmentally responsible manner.

The Rose Foundation ensures that oil is collected, stored and recycled properly. The function of the organisation is to support that, to place a mechanism in place to make sure that that happens and that all the collectors are credited properly, that their vehicles properly comply with the law, that people that touch the oil are properly trained, they know what to do, and that they pick up oil [take it] to properly appointed places, and that there’s a line of sight about every litre of oil that is available in South Africa.

Oil often ends up either in landfills or down drains and also unrecycled oil is used in oil generators or it’s sold to unlicensed processors a few of the uses include using it for burner fuel, painted onto vineyard fence poles, it is important to know the dangers of these about contamination risks and other related risks.

One litre of oil can contaminate a million litres of water. So primarily this is about preventing damage to the environment because oil contains substances that can be harmful to the environment and human use and plants.” The primary function of trying to do this correctly is to prevent the oil from getting into the environment, getting into our soil and damaging the soil and seeping into water sources,” said BUBELE NYIBA founder or the founder NPO.

She further revealed that oil is recycled appropriately in South Africa, “even though there are the isolated cases of oil not being handled properly, the good news is that the oil in South Africa is recycled properly and so much so that we are experiencing a shortage of used oil in South Africa, and we in fact import used oil from neighbouring countries,” she added.

In 2020 the government issued regulations called ‘extended producer responsibility regulations, and those regulations have now been formally promulgated for the packaging industry, for the lighting and electronic industry and used oil is set to follow.

” Currently the whole initiative by the organization has been voluntary, but soon it’ll become compulsory for every user of oil to comply with certain laws. it’s not yet illegal for people not to report the oil to the Rose Foundation or to take it to someone who’s not registered with the Rose Foundation right now, but soon it will be,” Nyiba further stated.

Speaking on the capacity is that we have in South Africa for re-refining, Nyiba concluded by saying, “We have three plants in South Africa that re-refine oil back to the base oil. So we’ve got a plant in Pietermaritzburg that does so in the case of KZN Province, we’ve got two plants in Gauteng: one in Meyerton and the other one in Pretoria. So we’ve got ample capacity in South Africa to re-refine that base oil.”