Used Oil: Chapter VII of the Waste Rules

In one line

Since 1 April 2024 a producer of base oil or lubricating oil must ensure that a rising percentage of what it sold two years ago is recycled, and it discharges that duty by buying certificates from registered recyclers.

In the wording a student can write in an examination: Chapter VII of the Hazardous and Other Wastes (Management and Transboundary Movement) Rules 2016, rules 25 to 43, headed Extended Producer Responsibility for Used Oil, was inserted by the (Second Amendment) Rules 2023, G.S.R. 677(E) of 18 September 2023, and came into force in the year 2024-2025; rule 25 defines the terms, rule 26 requires registration on the Central Pollution Control Board's portal, rule 27 sets the modalities and the targets, rules 28 and 29 the generation and transaction of extended producer responsibility certificates, rule 30 the portal, rules 31 to 35 the responsibilities of producers, importers, collection agents, recyclers and bulk generators, rule 39 environmental compensation, rule 40 prosecution, rule 41 verification and audit and rule 42 a Steering Committee.

Why a whole chapter for one substance

Because used oil is a hazardous waste that is also a valuable feedstock. It can be re-refined into base oil, which is the same product it began as, so the material is worth recovering and the market for recovering it already exists.

And because that market was informal. Used oil was collected and burned or crudely reprocessed, which destroys a recoverable resource and produces the emissions a hazardous waste rule exists to prevent. The Chapter's purpose is to route the same material through registered recyclers.

The order of priority is stated in the rule itself. Rule 27(1): extended producer responsibility covers the following modes for managing used oil in order of priority, first producing re-refined base oil or lubrication oil, and second energy recovery. Re-refining first, burning second, and the certificate formula prices the difference.

Rule 25, the definitions that decide the case

Producer. Any person or entity, whatever the selling technique, including a dealer, retailer or electronic retailer, who manufactures and offers to sell base oil or lubrication oil domestically under its own brand; or offers to sell lubrication oil domestically under its own brand using base oil manufactured by others; or offers to sell imported base oil or lubrication oil domestically.

So a company that blends and brands somebody else's base oil is a producer, and so is an importer who sells under his own brand.

Bulk generator. Any entity such as an automobile industry, railways, defence establishment, transport company, industrial unit, power transmission company, hotel or restaurant generating more than 100 metric tonnes of used oil a year.

Recycling. Any process of re-refining used oil to produce base oil or lubrication oil, or any process of energy recovery from used oil, in an environmentally sound manner with the facilities specified in the Board's standard operating procedure or guidelines.