Biodegradable Motor Oil Made from Cow Fat Now Available

Motor oil is nasty stuff. It’s the biggest source of pollution in most waterways and can contain toxic substances like benzene and lead. As new vehicles begin to move toward a more eco-friendly model all around, motor oil will likely get a makeover too – or perhaps be reinvented all together using cow fat. That’s right, you could use cow fat instead of motor oil for a biodegradable, natural, non-polluting lubricant. Right now, it’s only available for recreational vehicles - not yet for full-size automobiles.

From Eco Geek via Green Daily:

Green Earth Technologies, creator of organic engine products, has released their new automotive lubricant to its G-Oil line, a 10W-30 that has set a new biodegradability standard. The oil biodegraded over 90% in a speedy 9 days, blowing the 28-day rate of decomposition required by the American Society of Testing Materials out of the water. Pretty impressive.

The oil, like the others in the line, is made from saturated fat from cows, which works great for high performance in engines. This new oil is for 4-cycle off-road and recreational vehicle engines and so helps out an eensy bit with the impact vehicles have when operated, though it’s not like these types of vehicles tend to be ultra green in the first place.

Green Daily worries that this will give companies a new reason to coop cows up and harvest a different kind of fluid from them. If my understanding of the process is correct, slaughterhouses would simply have a different use for the fat left over as byproducts. I can’t imagine that they would lock cows up and ‘harvest’ fat from them to make oil, but then again, some of the things they do to animals in the livestock industry is pretty unimaginably disgusting and cruel, so who knows. Doing it that way would certainly be a step in the wrong direction.

One thing I do know is, a lot of people out there right now are wondering whether cow fat motor oil would make your exhaust smell like hamburgers. Dirty, burnt hamburgers from the greasiest diner on the side of the highway – just the way some folks like it, I guess. Yuck.

Link [Green Daily] + [Eco Geek]
Photo credit: Flickr user Michael (mx5tx)

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