Disposable Helium canisters?
Asked by
Entropy (
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)
January 10th, 2023
In case you’re not aware, you can buy helium canisters from Party Time and other stores. The canister looks like a lightweight, pink propane tank for your propane grill.
Only, here’s the thing – they’re disposable. You not only don’t have to turn them in to be refilled and reused, you CAN’T. Party Time (and presumably others) don’t accept them. Instead, you’re expected to punch a hole in them so they can’t hold pressure (for safety reasons) and turn them in at the local dump for scrap metal. I did this and saw a basket of like 20–25 that had been dropped off that day…and it was only noon.
My response to this is—- WHAT!?! How, in this day and age are we not even attempting to reuse these? A propane tank you would just turn in at the hardware store for another that was filled, and the store out put propane into the tank at their leisure. How is this not a thing for helium? They clearly CAN do it – they got the helium in there the first time. Is it just not economical to ship? It was economical enough to ship them with the helium.
Life has taught me that when something bizarre like this is happening, there’s usually an economic variable I’m not seeing. So someone help me. What am I missing here?
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8 Answers
I can certainly understand it not being reused, since it is a pressure vessel, and they may be concerned about material fatigue, but them not accepting it and forcing you to dispose of them yourself, is clearly a cost saving measure on their part. They do not want to pay someone to dispose of the canisters, so they force you to do it for free. The same with self-checkout lanes. It is all just penny pinching.
@ragingloli – It’s not the DIY nature of disposal that bothers me. I’m mostly okay with that. Sure, it would be a fairly minimal service convenience if they would take the tank back at their store and drive a truck over to the dump themselves, but that they don’t would just get them a slightly askance look from me.
It’s the no reuse that blows my mind. We reuse propane tanks…which are FAR more dangerous in contents than helium given the flammable nature. If material fatigue is the issue, then simply put a bar code on each container and track number of uses.
I believe the issue with Helium specifically, is that because of its monoatomic nature, it diffuses into the metal and makes it brittle.
This is an example of something that needs a “core charge” like we do with batteries and other car parts like brake rotors. It’s essentially a deposit on the material that gets paid back on return of the spent part so it can be recycled. This is required by law.
Do you all understand the canister gets melted down and recycled ?
^^ No, didn’t know that. Thanks!
My city takes small LPG (remove filler valve stem) and Helium in the recycle bins. Right with the soda and beer cans.
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