Here in the peoples republic of california, both the oil and filter are considered hazardous materials and you can get one heck of a fine for improper disposal of either.
The good news is, I think most places that sell or change oil are required to take your old stuff back. But they dont have to make it easy on you, they dont have to be nice about it, and they dont have to take your container, just the oil.
But we have a nice hazardous waste place that takes batteries, oil, paint, etc for free, they're open all day every day, and they dont give you a lot of trouble.
Costs me about ten bucks to change my oil. Usually $3-5 for the filters on sale, and I buy "wolfs head" oild from sams club for a little over a buck a quart. The old timers will remember wolfs head as an old-time brand from way back. Pennzoil bought the name years ago and sells pennzoil under that name to hit the el-cheapos among us without diluting their brand.
My expedition was a horrifying experience to do as a large team of scientists using massive supercomputers determined the absolute worst spot on the engine to mount the filter. Once that was achieved, teams of tiny elves were hired to sharpen every piece of metal near the filter, and a special brain trust was tapped to find as many obscure other engine-bay items to place as close as possible to the filter, all around it.
My BMW was also interesting, as the filter was on top of the motor, open side down. Pretty much guaranteed to dump its contents all over the exhaust manifold. About what you'd expect from a car whose fuel pump replacement instructions started with "remove exhaust system; remove drive shaft"...which I translated roughly from german to english as "remove rear seat, cut hole over fuel pump through sheet metal with reciprocating saw"
Infiniti came a close second to the BMW in intelligent oil spillage geometry by placing the filter on the front of the motor amidst all the fan belts. Took me an hour with a flashlight to FIND it the first time.
The RAV4 has the plug and filter on the front of the engine, right behind the bumper. I dont even have to get under it, just shove the drain pan under it, reach under and its all done in about 2 minutes.
I'm about to find out how hard it is to do the oil change in the lexus. The nearest dealer is about 45 minutes away and when I was in the area the other day and called to see if they could do a quicky oil change, they told me the next available 'slot' was a week away. For an oil change. :
Our toyota dealer can do them, but the last time I took it there the mechanic looked at it and practically mimicked the old aamco commercial "Gee...I always wanned to work on one of them there japanneeeeese transmissseyones". It appeared that I had learned more from reading the lexus product brochures and putting gas in the car every six weeks than the mechanic knew about them.
Sooo...looks like I'll be removing a large plastic belly pan sometime in the near future...while my wife thinks up ways to blame me for everything that ever goes wrong with the car from this point forward.
By the way, to remove oil filters without sloshing, find an empty (or about to be) round plastic bottle of something thats flexible and only slightly larger than the oil filter and cut the top off of it...then spread some glue inside of it and while the glue is tacky, sprinkle it with sand and then shake out the residual. You now have a handy-dandy oil filter removal tool that'll catch all the loose oil. Slip it over the filter, squeeze and spin.
Note: this does not work on an infiniti q45 or bmw 325ic, unless you suspend the car upside down or from its tail (respectively) or have an anti-gravity device.
I have also tested the fram "quick drain" and found it to be a fabulous device that saves no time at all, still dribbles oil and often leaks.
And yes, fram filters do suck.
