When I was a teenager and young adult, I cared about the environmental pollution. I would SCUBA in Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands. I was acutely aware that the salt water I got in my mouth, eyes, and my ears needed to be somewhat pure or I would get sick.
My peers dumped oil and fuel as they felt it necessary. There was really, nowhere, to dump small amounts of petroleum products safely. Even the most environmentally sensitive of my peers would dump a quart of old gasoline on a gravel road with the hope that it would evaporate instead of run down stream or get into the water table.
I did everything in my power to use up the gasoline which I used in outboard motors and lawn mowers. Yet from time to time I had leftover fuel. I would try to evaporate it on hot days in the summer in a pie tin. It was a slow and dangerous process and obviously contributed to air pollution.
Over the recent decades, I refused to dump or try to evaporate fuel. Every few years some agency would be accepting fuel or oil and I would save it until I could dispose of it properly.
Over the past five years, I saved eight gallons of fuel and oil. In desperation I loaded up the car and went over to the Thurston County Dump. At the dump is a place called "hazo-house."
Instead of me begging for information about where to properly get rid of the hazardous materials; they opened up my car and took it away while I was talking to somebody. I asked how much it would cost. It was free!
So get rid of your lawn mower and outboard motor fuel, when it spoils, at the dump. Don’t pollute!
In his book, An Alternative Boating Guide to Southern Puget Sound