Disposable bottles.

[eggs]

Hello all.
After a recent tidy up, i found at least 20,000,000 accumulated empty disposable 404, 134, 407 gas bottles. I popped them into the van and went off to the scrap merchants to dispose of them, but he wouldn't take them.

What do you all do with yours.

Cheers

eggs

[Chunk]

I took a trip to my local Climate Centre when it was dark,and left them hidden behind their skip.

They even had some empty calor gas bottles hidden away.They really do stock allsorts.

[Argus]

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Well, this is a pretty kettle of fish - here’s the case in the UK – (Excluding Scotland and N Ireland where the rules are no less stringent but slightly different).

Empty disposable gas bottles, (including Hydrocarbons used as a refrigerant) is Hazardous Waste.
That means that you have to either pay a licensed operator to dispose of it if you are a householder, or if you are a refrigeration company that handles it or generates it (for example disposable cylinders that are now illegal to use anyway) you need a license to move it on for authorised destruction.
As a service company you must be registered to handle and transport the waste refrigerant and oils you remove and have a system in place to legally dispose of it. This also applies to one-man-bands as well as the big outfits. Old gas bottles contain a heel of refrigerant gas that make it Hazardous Waste.
That’s why scrap companies won’t touch it, plus the scrap merchants are being searched regularly these days for stolen scrap metal, so don’t be surprised if your scrap man won’t buy anything until he sees proof of provenance, i.e. where you got it from.

You can’t claim ignorance of the laws on Hazardous Waste, they’ve been around for a few years now and are well publicised, including on this site.

There are legal ways of disposing of them, and the original fillers of the refrigerant will have a duty of care to see that they are safely disposed of and should therefore advise you how to do it, but it's not cheap.



On the other hand you could do a bit of fly tipping, but there are some penalties that I found on this site,
http://www.crimereduction.homeoffice...ytipping01.htm

The interesting bits are summarised and quoted here:

• Fly-tipping fines are up to £20,000 and/or 6 months' imprisonment. Fines are unlimited if the case goes to the Crown Court or up to 2 years' imprisonment, and up to 5 years if hazardous waste is dumped.
• It is also an offence to permit or authorise fly-tipping on land where a Waste Management License is not held.
• Where fly-tipping involves the use of a vehicle, the driver can be prosecuted, as can the owner of the vehicle.
• The police have powers to seize vehicles used for fly-tipping.

Not only that, but you get a criminal record and your fingerprints and DNA are on file for all time.

So you could do a bit of fly tipping on private property, your local Climate Center, for instance.
That’s trespass as well as fly tipping ……
Many places are putting in CCTV for this purpose, because they are lumbered with the cost of disposing other people’s crap.




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[Andy AC]

Suck the remainder of the gas out then cut the valve off the top of the cylinder, so it cant hold any pressure again.

Andy

[Brian_UK]

Suck the remainder of the gas out then cut the valve off the top of the cylinder, so it cant hold any pressure again.

Andy

He's still got to dispose of the cylinders though

[The Viking]

He's still got to dispose of the cylinders though

But then it would just be ferrous scrap...

[Chunk]

Those bottles clearly have "disposable" written on the boxes.I checked earlier on with my local refuse site(which i used a couple of years ago to dispose of them last time)and was told that if the bottles are empty they will take as scrap.
The valves are easily unscrewed when they have no pressure in,just prove to the chaps at the tip that it is empty and safe.

[Grizzly]

Those bottles clearly have "disposable" written on the boxes.I checked earlier on with my local refuse site(which i used a couple of years ago to dispose of them last time)and was told that if the bottles are empty they will take as scrap.
The valves are easily unscrewed when they have no pressure in,just prove to the chaps at the tip that it is empty and safe.

It's much the same down our way.
Although we are hardly cutting edge.
Basically if we reclaim any refrigerant to our suppliers cylinders. Prior to return to them with the requisite paperwork.
The empties will be accepted by our local scrap man.
Provided the valves have been removed.
Cheers Grizzly