No need to blow this out of proportion...
The engine has burned a little oil since new. Literally around 1/4 of my daily commute is on a 6-7% grade. So unless I'm running errands after work, nearly every day the car gets a significant proportion of its driving at 3500 RPM at high load, and at 2800-3800 RPM at 0 throttle (depending on how much I feel like using the brakes). This engine probably works harder on its daily drive than our 7.4 liter big block does while towing a horse trailer.
The car is not abused. Factory fill, two fills of Exxon Superflo, one of Motorcraft, and two of YB Pennzoil, all drawn out to around 6000 miles, when the OLM was at 15%.
You could fault me on three possible things:
1) I left the factory fill in for a full OCI.
2) I left the original filter on for two changes (and regrettably didn't have a filter cutter at the time).
3) I used some amount of SL rated oil on the second or third fill.
(1) and (2) are per Honda's recommendations. I highly doubt (3) matters.
I used to fret about this but our new Mazda3 2.3 is also losing a little oil between changes (too soon to tell how much, it hasn't even had a full length OCI yet), and we saw similar behavior on another previous car as well. I'm getting more inclined to blame it on the commute.
Second fill of yellow bottle Pennzoil 5w-20. Didn't bother with a TBN because it's done so well for the last two UOAs. This oil came in bottles with the new label, and looks like the formulation was different from the first YB fill too, in particular the Moly was lower and the Boron higher.
Anyway, nothing too exciting here but I figured I'd post it for the gallery anyway. Now I've got Castrol GTX 5w-20 in there to see if something different (and on the thick side of 5w-20 instead of the thin side) will reduce the consumption a little (which is probably just the result of the driving conditions the car sees). I probably won't get a UOA this time around, but will probably get another at some point after that to check on the trending.
FWIW I also cut open the filter, a Napa Gold, which had been on for the last two OCIs per the maintenance schedule. The filter element looked really good, no grime or anything to speak of. Looked no different from other filter elements I've seen with way fewer miles on them. Due to that and the fact that the UOA didn't show anything strange, I guess I'm pretty comfortable with running a [good] filter for two OCIs. I've got a Honda A02 on there now, which I'll probably cut open after this OCI rather than running it twice, though.
An engine with 36,000 miles needs cleaning? 
,heck my 225,000 mile Z71 doesn't use that much in a 6,000 mile OCI.
Thats a lot of make up oil.
I've gone 11K miles on Mobil 1 (80% highway) in my 2007 Civic EX and the engine oil used less than 1/2 a quart.