An end to single use canisters?

I have the one lb. Flame King canister and the refill kit for it. Unfortunately, the last time I checked there
are no commercial facilities that will refill the one pound canisters. This may have changed and I hope it does.

I've seen a few videos of people who refill the green Coleman canisters which is not recommended by the manufacturer.

Randy

All of the isobutane/propane canisters I have are 100% steel, MSR, Snow Peak and Olicamp. However they are far thinner stock than the green Coleman style propane canisters. It’s easy to puncture the isopro canisters as we know here but they tell you on the canister not to puncture the green propane canisters for some reason so maybe that kind of makes it an issue for recycling. 

Ha. The old Bluet’s were, iirc, aluminum (and they also were pure butane, a likely critical difference re internal pressure) . Didn’t think to do a magnet test.

The typical “iso” canisters are indeed recyclable and there’s even a tool to safely puncture them (JetBoil sells one).

Then there’s the residue but figure it’s not organic if talking about steel and/or aluminum recycling. Not saying anything about the gasses if that’s a concern (more “environmental” sub-forum), but interestingly many hikers go with cold soaking just to avoid the hassle of trying to find canisters, then getting gouged on pricing in smaller “clutch” areas (just passed Cascade Locks on the PCT and canisters were being sold for $13 to $15 apiece). Cold flavored mashed potatoes (pretty calorie filled) are about as good cold as they are warm..





Probably but hope they leave the iso cans used by backpackers alone or even add separate recycling stations at trailheads along with aforementioned tool. One potential problem with banning them outright for true backcountry users is sometimes a hot meal is needed plus it invites those who’ll challenge with an open flame heat source (esbit, alcohol, etc..) creating more fire hazards.

Yeah, as were the beautifully engineered Coleman Powermax canisters.


The problem, of course, is that neither are "refillable".
If you look at the map on the Little Kamper site (you cited), you'll see that there are very few retailers outside of the west coast. :^(

I have a device and do refill green 1lb propane canisters. But the threads aren’t up for all that many connections and disconnects, so I’ve only tended to refill once or twice. I fill from my 20lb bottle for the grill. Zeke has tipped me off to 5lb refillable bottles, which might be small enough for my car-camping. Honestly, on a week-long family trip back in the day we might go through 2-3 of the green bottles, so the larger one seems reasonable to me (though now I travel alone more often and don’t need as much fuel. I’d actually really like a refillable (by me) 2lb bottle.

It occurs to me that one reason they don’t recommend doing what I do is that the bottles have no means of preventing over-fill, which is dangerous and I think may cause spillage? That was why they banned all the old random tanks that used to be out there, so that they would all have the proper fill mechanism. Too bad. We used to have a maybe 4lb sausage-shaped tank when I was a kid. It sat perfectly in the footwell of the sliding door on our van.