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-   -   How to dispose off an old helmet? (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/ride-safe/182771-how-dispose-off-old-helmet.html)

Any tips on how to dispose of used helmets? The helmet I want to get rid of has fallen thrice (once with my head in it). I am sure it should not be used again. If I keep it for garbage collection, I am sure some bright spark will pick it up for using it.

Mods, I found this helmet thread relevant for this question, but please move/ delete post as required

Selfdrive, moving your unique query to an independent thread.

Try talking to a trustworthy helmet shop or where you got your new helmet? Someone has got to have a way (destroying, recycling etc.)?

You are absolutely right that the helmet is no longer capable of protecting a head.

The helmet as you most probably know is made up of two distinct layers. The hard outer shell and the inner thermocol type layer.

If you want to make it unusable you will need to destroy the shell. The only easy way to do that IMHO is a good whack with a hammer.

But if you have a garden, then without the inner layer the helmet can become a flower pot!

Destroy the helmet inside out and put it in dry waste. It is time to take out that sledge hammer and vent out all your anger on unruly motorists. :deadhorse

Remove soft cushiony insides of the helmet and cut away the straps so that it cannot be used as a helmet again. Then either get the garbage guy to pick it up or fill it up with mud and grow a plant in it!

What's useless for you, may be of immense use for someone who can't afford this expensive piece of safety enhancing material. For you, the helmet may have become useless, but if it doesn't have any crack on it, better donate it to some poor guy who may need a helmet and makes a compromise with those roadside 200 rupees helmets.

Easiest way is rip it apart, remove the liners and the thermocol inserts and break the shell at few places. You can make a youtube video and have fun too :)

This you can dispose off at your local dry waste disposal point, either inside the apartment or locality collection.

Surprisingly, no one seems to want a used helmet. When I got a new helmet, I assumed the shop guys will take it since there here almost anything can be 'exchanged'. But they said no and also said no one will take it. This was in the JC Road Area of Bangalore- A hub of automotive stuff. It was not even damaged. Just that I did not want to use the helmet I used with my splendor with my Pulsar 200NS. :)

For some time I used to take it instead of my new helmet and leave it in the bike in the hope that someone would steal it. That also never happened. :)

Note. This was 2-3 years back.

Just 15 minutes back, I handed over my red colored Studds helmet to a traffic cop. I stopped using that specific helmet since over a year. Thought of donating it and left it with a cop who was busy checking the vehicles. Initially he was surprised, later he accepted it when I said that "It's lying useless with me, give to someone needy with a shabby or broken helmet, while you carry out the checking", he happily kept it. Maybe he will take 50-100 bucks (Which he will any ways), but some needy person will get a studds helmet, instead of those unsafe local ones.

We have a giveaway thread, but there are many people whom many items can be given away, but they can't afford a computer to come up on TBHP to claim the items those are useless to us but useful to them.

I'd say donate it to someone who needs it. I am sure that a used helmet is better than none at all.

Challenge will be to differentiate between a needy person and a careless one. I quite like VKumar's idea of approaching a cop to do the needful.

Invert it and put some plants in it. Hang it on balcony. Or donate it to some NGO, they'll find some use for it. Or exchange it for a new helmet at a helmet shop. They generally take used helmets. In Bangalore I see helmet shops with a totem pole like structure on which these old broken helmets are kept. Perhaps yours will find pride of place there.

Since I have DIY bug, I would do something like this.
I had made one for a friend last year but at that time I had not photo-logged it, as for me it was kind of time-pass project.




Regards-Sonu

Selfdrive! you can just give it to someone who has not been using any helmet at all. Since you are in PUNE, you will find such people very easily. I assume your helmet does not have any cracks and the inner liner etc is still in good shape.

Something is better than nothing.

PUNE is a place where you can get fined for not wearing a seatbelt, but you can drive without a helmet no issues.:Frustrati

Old helmets can be a real problem with dust and muck accumulation and wastage of space.
I gave the old ones to our maid which she gave it to a scrap dealer and made a few bucks in the process. My elder cousin uses his old helmet (the half face type) as an asylum for his pet rabbit, it keeps him warm in winters :D

Me, being a crazy engineer would hack it in half [have some fun while doing it], sand out the rough edges and would give it to a primary school's physics library, and ask the teachers to put it on display with a write-up which shows each layer's material and what is each layer's function and how it protects our skull.