Nitrous Oxide Canisters (Hippy Crack)

[fiction-factory]

The streets, car parks and some shop doorways and church grounds round here are littered with these nitrous oxide canisters (whipped cream chargers- yeah, right) and balloons, plus piles of McDonalds wrappers (presumably the gas makes you feel hungry) and fag ends. I see groups of youths/ young men meeting up in car parks, arriving in cars, sharing some 'hippy crack' canisters and McDs, then driving off at great speeds in their BMWs and Audis.

A few questions-
1)Where do they get their canisters from? Surely most are bought for highs than for whipping cream. Are they freely available in supermarkets? (May be coincidence but some of the ones I know have families with ice cream vans.)
2)Is it illegal to drive after using them?
3)Is it a passing craze or is it here to stay, particularly as the main users are for religious reasons not allowed to drink alcohol to get their kicks?
4)Can I recycle the canisters? If I collected a few hundred or so (easily done over a few days) would there be a scrap value?

[spathiphyllum]

you'd need a big machine to crush them, but a machine never would, because if there was even one unopened canister it would cause an explosion.

[Mamyalynne]

https://directcream.wordpress.com/2010/06/29/recycle-cream-chargers/

Put your postcode in here.

https://www.recyclemetals.org/

[fiction-factory]

Cars flatten them pretty well

[spathiphyllum]

well FF each to their own. If you want to lay them across the ground and drive over them in sequence for the sake of the environment then you're a better person than I

The metal is expensive apparently.. You could probably sell them to scrap metal yard if you crushed them yourself?

[douglas9401]

"4. they are not recyclable."

"you having a laugh? You're not going to be able to flatten them, they're solid!"

"you'd need a big machine to crush them,.."

"The metal is expensive apparently.. You could probably sell them to scrap metal yard if you crushed them yourself?"

All in the space of 10 minutes.

[spathiphyllum]

Tar Dah!