Moses Mokgosi was 14 years old when he walked through a puddle he thought was water. The black stain that spread across his white takkies that afternoon in Westonaria wasn't mud — it was used engine oil, dumped by a nearby mechanic onto the red soil of the West Rand. It never washed out. Neither did the image of what he had seen.
Growing up in Westonaria, a mining and industrial town southwest of Johannesburg, Moses watched for years as used oil was disposed of carelessly all around him. Workshop operators poured it into open ground. Mechanics spread it on township roads to keep the dust down. Rain washed it into streams and drainage channels that families lived alongside.
"Everyone just accepted it as normal," Moses recalls. "Nobody talked about what it was doing to the ground, to the water. I started asking questions that nobody around me could answer — why is this allowed? What happens to this oil? Where does it go?"
Those questions followed him through school, through odd jobs, through his early adult years. They eventually became the founding purpose of Auto Blue Oils, which Moses registered in 2009 at the age of 22.
The early years were not easy. Moses started the business with minimal capital, a borrowed bakkie, and a list of contacts he had built through sheer persistence. He would knock on the doors of workshops, service stations and small factories, explaining that he could take their used oil away legally, safely and — in many cases — at no cost to them.
Some doors were slammed. Others opened slowly. The ones that opened first were typically the operators who had already been fined or warned by environmental inspectors — people who understood the risk they were sitting on and wanted a legitimate solution.
"My first collection was 200 litres from a workshop in Westonaria. I drove it to a recycling facility myself. I had no idea if this business would survive. But I knew the problem was real, and I knew nobody else in my community was solving it."
The turning point came when Moses applied for and received accreditation from the ROSE Foundation — the industry body established to coordinate responsible used oil management across South Africa. That accreditation gave Auto Blue Oils legitimacy in the eyes of larger clients, and opened the door to corporate contracts with manufacturers, fleet operators and industrial companies.
The company invested in proper collection vehicles, storage infrastructure and compliance systems. By 2015, Auto Blue Oils had grown from a one-man operation into a team with the capacity to store 80,000 litres of used oil on-site at its Westonaria headquarters.
Moses's work has not gone unnoticed. Auto Blue Oils has received recognition from the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, the City of Johannesburg WasteHub and GDARD — Gauteng's Department of Agriculture and Rural Development. The company is also accredited as a Proudly South African enterprise.
Beyond the accreditations, the business has become a symbol of what is possible when a young South African entrepreneur turns a local environmental problem into a sustainable commercial solution — one that creates jobs, protects communities, and contributes to a greener economy.
Today, more than 15 years after those stained takkies, Moses Mokgosi still runs Auto Blue Oils from Westonaria. The company serves clients across Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. It collects hundreds of thousands of litres of used oil every year and ensures every litre is properly documented and processed.
But the mission, he says, hasn't changed since he was 14. "I just want the oil to stop going into the ground. Every collection we do is one more step towards that. It's that simple."
Schedule your first collection with Auto Blue Oils and be part of the solution.