Ammunition Disposal

The best way to dispose of you ammo is to sell it to me.  If you don’t want to take care of dispossing of your ammo by shooting it, sell it to me.  I will pay you cash for it.  I am an avid shooter, and need lots of ammo for the sport.  I will pay you a fair price for what you have.  This is the best way to dispose of your ammo.

From the recycling point view, ammunition falls into two categories:

• Live Ammo:  Never fired, complete, read to use ammunition
• Spent Ammo:  Already fired ammunition

Spent ammo recycles will all else.  It is just metal.  If practical, the lead should be collected separately.

Live ammo needs to be separated from the propelant.  That is the safest way to recycle it.  After that, all else is regular metal.  Firing the ammo is the easiest way to dispose of the propelant.

Ammunition is flamable but not a fire hazard.  It is like having fuel in your car.  Unless you ignite it, nothing will happen.  In fact, it is very hard to make ammuntion ignite with out using a firearm.  Actually, gasoline, natural gas, and even diesel fuel, because they are constantly off-gassing, are much more flamable.  To ignite any of that type of fuel, all it takes is a spark close enough to the fumes.  For gun powder to explode, it has to be directly exposed to high temperature flame or spark.

Ammo, by itself, is not considered an explosive.  Ammuntion and bombs are very different.  Ammo does not explode easily.  For it to explode, the primer needs to striked.  That is hard to do accidentally.  The only way to stripe the primer is to hit it just right.  Which is not easy.

Ammuntion is very tough.  It can fall out of airplanes, and be trampled by tanks and still not explode.

Spent ammo is recylable together with any metals.  Life ammo is not immediately recyclable.  Thus it is better to properly dispose of it.

Ammunition is made of (4) components:

• Casing
• Primer
• Propelant
• Projectile

The first three are a metal.  The primer is a metal cased magnesium based chemical.  So they recycle easy.  The propelant is gun powder.  That is not recyclable for sure.  It is not much of a contaminant either.  In principle, it has the same type of composition as fertilizer.

It is not a good idea to through live ammo in the recycling bin.  Most likely nothing will happen if you through the live ammo in the metal recycle bin, but it is not a good idea.  The reason is simple.  At some point the metal in the recycle bin will be compacted and then heated.  If there is a little bit of life ammo, most likely nothing is going to happen.  But if you have a lot of live ammo, there may be some ignition at some point.  Most likely it will not be a big deal, but better not play with that.