Castrol is launching Castrol MoreCircular, designed to reduce the carbon footprint of business lubricants in the U.S. Castrol MoreCircular encompasses the entire process of collecting used oil from business customers, re-refining it, and integrating re-refined base oil into premium lubricants for supply to businesses.
Castrol MoreCircular was created in collaboration with Safety-Kleen, an environmental services subsidiary of Clean Harbors Inc. Following successful market trials, Safety-Kleen and Castrol signed a multi-year collaboration agreement. The Castrol MoreCircular program will launch on May 20 at the Advanced Clean Transportation Expo in Las Vegas.
The Castrol MoreCircular offer combines Castrol’s lubricant technology with Safety-Kleen’s geographic reach and expertise in collecting and re-refining used oil. It results from investment in research and development aimed at integrating re-refined base oils into lubricant formulations while ensuring that the new product range continues to meet or exceed the latest original equipment manufacturer and industry standards. Successful trials with several Castrol business customers demonstrated these lower-carbon-footprint lubricants’ quality and performance attributes, which the company said was the same performance as the version containing virgin base oil.
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“Our ability to collect used oil from across the country and reprocess a waste product means that much of it can be used again and again,” said Andreas Osbar, CEO of Castrol Americas. “Delivering these lower-carbon-footprint lubricants can help our business customers meet their sustainability goals with the same high-quality and high-performance they expect from Castrol. We believe the time is right to lead the market with an integrated, more circular—and as a result—lower-carbon-footprint offer as our business customers are searching for levers to help de-carbonize their operations.”
The end-to-end offer begins with collecting used lubricants from Castrol MoreCircular customers, such as fleet maintenance shops and industrial sites. The used oil is then re-processed, enabling around 70% of it to be recovered as base oil. Re-refined base oil is combined with Castrol’s technology to blend premium lubricants, resulting in an estimated 20-40% lower carbon footprint than Castrol’s traditional products. Re-refined base oil makes up at least 65% of the base oil in each MoreCircular lubricant; the reduction in the carbon footprint depends partly on the percentage of RRBO used. When participating business customers purchase these lubricants, they help develop a more circular lubricant industry in the U.S.
Of the more than one billion gallons of used oil generated annually in the United States, only around 20% are re-refined back to base oils. With the launch of MoreCircular, Castrol is embracing circularity—a fundamental principle of Castrol’s PATH360 sustainability strategy.
