Inviting town, county and state officials, Santee Cooper celebrated 20 years of GOFER, South Carolina’s largest used motor oil recovery program. Over the 20 years of Santee Cooper’s used oil recovery program, Give Oil For Energy Recovery (GOFER) has collected more than 25 million gallons of used oil into enough Santee Cooper electricity to power every average-sized home in the state for six days.
“GOFER is one of the best oil recovery programs in the nation,” said Mark Hyatt of South Carolina’s Department of Health and Environmental Control. “We’ve come a long way in the last twenty years.”
According to a press release, Santee Cooper gave birth to GOFER in April of 1990 in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of Earth Day and collected 700 gallons of used motor oil across Berkeley and Horry Counties during a two-day span. In July of that year, the program formally began with the opening of countywide collection sites.
In six months the program had expanded statewide and by 1992 the 100th GOFER collection site was opened.
By 1994 there was a GOFER collection site in every county in South Carolina and today more than 600 GOFER sites have opened up around the state to collect more than 2 million gallons of used motor oil.
“We take the used motor oil and use it to generate electricity,” said Santee Cooper’s Jay Hudson. “Did you know that one gallon of dumped motor oil can contaminate one million gallons of water?”
The program’s rapid expansion has been due to partnerships between Santee Cooper and DHEC, the state’s electric cooperatives such as Berkeley Electric Cooperative, county recycling centers where many GOFER tanks are located and the shade tree mechanic, the do-it-yourself oil changers.
“With GOFER, Santee Cooper offers our state’s residents a solution for environmentally responsible used oil disposal,” said Lonnie Carter, CEO and president of Santee Cooper. “Santee Cooper is committed to environmental stewardship and GOFER’s statewide service helps us meet our mission and turn an environmental hazard into a source of electricity that we can all benefit from.”
It takes just two gallons of oil to power an average South Carolina home for 24 hours and one gallon of oil can generate enough electricity to pop 117 bags of microwave popcorn, run a TV for 90 hours or vacuum a house for seven months.
“I want to congratulate all the participants on the twentieth anniversary of GOFER,” said Berkeley County supervisor Dan Davis. “The GOFER program is an overwhelming success, not just in Berkeley County but all over South Carolina.”
Davis added that Berkeley County was the state’s largest collector of used motor oil in 2009 and that South Carolina was the leading state in the nation in the collection of green energy.
Santee Cooper created the program to give the state’s shade tree mechanics a means of properly disposing of its used motor oil. Until that time do-it-yourself oil changers were responsible of improperly disposing of more than 200 million gallons of motor oil a year, or the equivalent of 20 Exxon Valdez oil-tanker spills annually.
For more information or to locate a GOFER collection site, go www.scgofer.com or call 800-753-2233.
