Maine lawmaker wants a better system for throwing out explodable propane canisters

By Lori Valigra, Bangor Daily News Staff

Some Mainers may have to drive an hour or more to dispose of the propane canister they used when camping or at a cookout, which is why the small containers often end up in household trash or tossed into the woods.

That’s a problem lawmakers aim to solve with a new bill to study the safe disposal of single-use propane canisters, which often still contain enough propane to cause an explosion if punctured. There currently is no central repository or list of places that take the one-pound, nonrefillable propane canisters, making it hit or miss for people who want to dispose of them responsibly. The Maine Legislature’s environment committee will hear testimony on the bill on Monday.

“The problem of litter was one of the main motivators around it,” Rep. Ambureen Rana, D-Bangor, said. “People don’t have an option or any convenient or efficient way of disposing of them, so they just end up being littered.”

Rana introduced the bill, which has six co-sponsors in the Maine Senate and House. The bill requires the Maine Department of Environmental Protection to evaluate the current infrastructure for disposing of single-use propane canisters and make recommendations for improvements to the environment committee by Dec. 3. Possible outcomes might be a trade-in program or outright banning of the single-use canisters.

“The problem is, there is no kind of disposal or recycling system for these,” Alexander Cole, a research engineer at the University of Maine in Orono, said. “And there’s no incentive for them [the manufacturers] to go into the market of refillable propane tanks.”

Cole, who lives in Bangor, proposed the bill to Rana after noticing the canisters tossed into the woods and stacked in people’s garages. He spends a lot of time in the woods camping, but he found the closest facility to dispose of the small canisters is in Lewiston, about a two-hour drive for him. He solved the problem by purchasing a five-pound propane tank that can be refilled.

The one-pound canisters are popular among campers both for cooking and warmth at night. They are widely available from supermarkets to sporting goods stores. Amazon.com advertises two Coleman single-use canisters for $22.59. Refillable canisters are more expensive, with two Flame Kind canisters running $35.68 on Amazon.com.

Camping continues to be popular in Maine state parks, where 288,000 visitors camped last year, according to the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands. Total park visitors were up more than 6 percent at 3.12 million compared with 2023.

Currently, there is limited evidence of how many of the one-pound propane canisters are used in Maine. Nancy Driscoll, office manager at N ‘n M Recycling in Hancock, New Hampshire, said her company collects about 428 canisters each week from 15 locations in Maine. The recycling service collects several thousand weekly throughout New England. Other than the canisters her company collects, Driscoll has no idea how people are disposing of them. She supports Rana’s bill.

“They may just put them in a black garbage bag and throw them in the dumpster,” Driscoll said. “That’s no good because, if there’s any propane in it, it’s going to explode.”

Some canisters make it into the waste stream, causing concern for Jon Chalmers, director of administration at the Hatch Hill Solid Waste Disposal Facility in Augusta.

“It’s definitely an ongoing safety concern because it’s a fuel source under pressure,” Chalmers said. “We found them in our single-stream recyclables and mixed in with tin cans and glass.”

The landfill charges $2 to people disposing of the canisters and then recycles them with N ‘n M. Chalmers figured he sees several hundred canisters in the landfill’s waste stream over the course of a year.

He is happy to see that the Legislature may weigh in on hazardous disposal, saying other items such as lithium batteries and marine flares also are big concerns because of an ongoing fire risk.

Chalmers said he can’t definitely identify canisters as the cause of any fires at the Augusta landfill. But canisters have caused fires elsewhere. The explosion of a propane tank at a waste processing plant in Hampden in January 2020 injured a worker and forced the plant to temporarily shut down. The canister came to the former Coastal Resources of Maine plant with a delivery of household trash and exploded as it made its way through the plant’s processing equipment, according to a plant spokesperson at the time. The tank still had fuel in it, and the puncture caused a fireball. 

It can be difficult to tell if a canister is empty, Victor Horton, executive director of the Maine Resource Recovery Association in Newport, said. The center helps communities develop sustainable waste management practices.

“It’s a problem because it’s not convenient for a lot of people to get to places that will take the canisters,” said Horton, who plans to testify in favor of the bill. “Someone who lives up in Caribou or Frenchville is not going to be able to drive to Augusta or Lewiston with four or five canisters.”

There are two hazardous waste collection facilities, in Lewiston and Portland, that will take hazardous waste from anywhere in the state. Riverside Recycling in Portland charges $5 per canister disposal and the Environmental Depot in Lewiston charges $8 per canister. Some transfer stations will take them, but others will not, Horton said, saying it is best to call first.

If the bill passes, one option would be to study how to manage the canisters through its Stewardship Program for Packaging, David Madore, deputy commissioner of the state’s environmental department, said. Single-use propane canisters would fit under the program, he said, which aims to push some of the burden of recycling onto product manufacturers starting in 2027. Producers that send the canisters into the state would have to report sales and pay a fee, or set up their own program to collect and manage the canisters.

Other states are looking into how to handle disposal of the single-use canisters. California took the strongest action so far last September when it became the first state to ban canisters that are not reusable or refillable by Jan. 1, 2028. The state consumes some 10 percent of the up to 60 million single-use canisters sold in the United States, according to Sen. John Laird, D-Santa Cruz. When the law was announced he said the propane cylinders have placed a great burden on California’s park systems, beaches, trash facilities and local governments.

“The hope is to look into all of the options to mitigate harm,” said Rana of the proposed bill in Maine. “It is a possibility that the study will come back and say banning is the best option, or maybe recycling might make more sense such as the stewardship program that fits into policies that already exist.”

Valigra reports on the environment for the BDN’s Maine Focus investigative team. Reach her at lvaligra@bangordailynews.com. Support for this reporting is provided by the Unity Foundation, a fund at the Maine Community Foundation and donations by BDN readers.