Garage wins environmental award by recycling oil

An ingenious recycling project at Inukjuak’s municipal garage is among the recipients of Quebec’s 2006 Phoenix awards for environmental excellence.

The Phoenix awards honour efforts by Quebeckers to protect the environment in several categories such as research, protection, waste management and site remediation.

Inukjuak’s Municipal Garage “distinguished itself” from the pack of nominations, and won the province’s “Gestion des matières résiduelles” award for its waste management of discarded materials – in this case, used oil.

“The recycling project of Inukjuak is now an example for other communities in Nunavik,” reads a news release on the awards ceremony.

Since 2000, Inukjuak’s oil-burning furnace has consumed 600 barrels worth of used oil to heat the garage. This special furnace has saved about 20,000 litres of fuel oil every year, cut costs, and eliminated hazardous waste from the community’s landfill site.

“From a simple idea in a municipal garage has sprung a trail of events that has led not only to a safer environment for one community, but a positive example for the entire region,” reads the project description.

The idea for the furnace came from a brainstorming session at the garage, where workers discussed removing oil barrels from the town dump and using them as fuel.

Gaétan Murray, a municipal garage mechanic, former garage manager Michael Kasudluak, and Siasi Smiler, who was then mayor of Inukjuak, spearheaded the project and found a furnace that could furnish heat from used oil.

The supply of oil was already in place – from the garage and from a bunch of old oil barrels at the dump, which were thought to be leaking.

But, because these barrels contained other products, the oil would have to be separated out.

So, Murray researched various techniques and finally came up with his own design for a unit capable of separating used oil from other products, such as anti-freeze, by using gravity.

The furnace came with a 500-gallon holding tank, but it turned out to be too small for any separation to take place, so the municipality decided to build a concrete-reinforced structure next to the garage that would hold a 2,500-gallon container to use for the separation process.

The Kativik Regional Government gave the project $50,000 under its Isurruutiit infrastructure program, which Quebec funds. The money went to buy the furnace, holding tank, separation tank and shelter for the filtration system.

The KRG also helped the garage obtain the necessary permits and organize other information, which needs to be given to Environment Québec on a regular basis.

Removing the oil-filled barrels turned out to be one of the largest challenges, as most of these were very old and leaking. Garage employees used their own time to gather, remove and empty the barrels. Inside the barrels, they found used oil as well as anti-freeze, water, rags and plastic bags. They kept the used oil, but sent the other materials to a disposal centre in Montreal, at the municipality’s expense.

In December 2000, the furnace burned its first used oil – and the system has now gone through all the old oil in the vicinity of Inukjuak.

As a result, Inukjuak struck a deal with Hydro-Québec to take its used oil from other communities along the Hudson Bay coast. This is now transported to Inukjuak instead of being sent south. The garage also accepts used oil from residents and other businesses.