Non-activated Airbag disposal?

I have a few airbags that have not yet went off that I need to get rid of.  

Post activation they are just fabric and metal, disposal is straightforward.   

But these are not yet.  

Obviously I *COULD* supply them 12V and watch stuff go, however I live in a residential area and they are.. very loud.   Also the risk is low, but there is not 0 risk that mistakes are made and they go off early or go in a direction that is undesired causing problems.  Also 2 of them are Takata Airbags.. I a scared.    It's probably not the best way to take care of them.  

Do Junkyards typically take them?  Is there an alternate way to render them inert and dispose of them as pieces? 

Selling or giving them away might work..  I guess, but that seems like the lowest upside vs downsides of selling used vehicle safety equipment.. 

Following, since I have at least 1 to dispose of. 

As-is they are a live explosive device. They'd be hard to give away or sell because you can't ship them. I'm pretty sure it is theoretically possible for them to activated with a static electricity charge.

I'd find somewhere to trigger them and then trash them once they are inert.

Throw 'em in a 55 gallon drum filled with water, trigger them.  SPLOOSH! no noise.

..... hopefully no noise.

We had a bunch left over from our salvage operation. I have no idea how we got rid of them. I do know the official Mazda technique for disposal involves detonation inside a container. The specs for the container got bigger and bigger as time went on - I think it was usually constructed out of a stack of tires strapped together. 

Bring them by a construction site and trigger them under an excavator shovel. 
 

Im sure they'll be glad to help. Construction guys love blowing E36 M3 up. 

We set one off with long leads, a 12 volt battery, and a stuffed monkey on top.  We had to recover the monkey from the roof of the shop, and he had lost an arm.

Do not blow it off face down.  Unless you are in a large open area, I guess.  I don't know how high it would go, but I'm betting quite.

We actually set them off for demonstrations at our Street Survival schools. 
Puts a real point on telling students what a bad idea it is to put your feet up on the dashboard!

One of the most quintessentially American activities is hanging out with your buddies eating burgers off the grill and watching your old airbags launch other used car parts launch dozens of feet in the air. My favorite topper is old tires, since they tend to run and bounce in a pleasingly dangerous/unpredictable way after the initial launch.

Do you really want to deprive your friends of that experience? 

Note: This is probably a good way to get the bomb squad called on you. Don't forget to wear safety glasses. 

Wait!  Can... can you bring them to the Challenge?

For reasons?

My buddy had an unused airbag from his 5th gen Prelude after he swapped the wheel. We bought 30, $1 burgers from McDonalds, unwrapped them and carefully placed them on top of the airbag, which was in an old tire.

The resulting carnage was pretty impressive. We were finding burger guts for a quite a while afterwards. A lot landed on the roof of his house. I wish I would have taken a picture.

Used airbags are common on eBay, so for the non-Takata models, selling them shouldn't be rocket science. They can be worth hundreds each.

Put it in a microwave you no longer care about. 

Turn the microwave on.

I'd be hitting up the local body shops to see if anyone needed a cheap replacement

I gave mine to the parts dept. at my dealer

I can remember setting one off at a street survival school once.  Someone had put a water bottle on the airbag to demonstrate how much force was in play.  As it reached its apogee we suddenly remembered the whole "what goes up must come down" thing and sort of had to scatter a little.

But another vote for seeing if a school would be interested in taking it as a donation for educational purposes.

Karacticus said:

We actually set them off for demonstrations at our Street Survival schools. 
Puts a real point on telling students what a bad idea it is to put your feet up on the dashboard!

That's what I did with mine -- gave them to the local BMWCCA chapter for demonstration use.

Mr_Asa said:

Wait!  Can... can you bring them to the Challenge?

For reasons?

I'm thinking of a mortar that could fire a bowling ball.

wae said:

As it reached its apogee we suddenly remembered the whole "what goes up must come down" thing and sort of had to scatter a little.

......not if it goes up high enough!

wae said:

I can remember setting one off at a street survival school once.  Someone had put a water bottle on the airbag to demonstrate how much force was in play.  As it reached its apogee we suddenly remembered the whole "what goes up must come down" thing and sort of had to scatter a little.

But another vote for seeing if a school would be interested in taking it as a donation for educational purposes.

If it's the school I'm thinking of, I believe I have photos somewhere.

I've been curious myself, I remember not really trusting Subarust's airbag while bouncing along ruddy rallycross sites.  I kept expecting a face-full of Takata.

Jerry said:

wae said:

I can remember setting one off at a street survival school once.  Someone had put a water bottle on the airbag to demonstrate how much force was in play.  As it reached its apogee we suddenly remembered the whole "what goes up must come down" thing and sort of had to scatter a little.

But another vote for seeing if a school would be interested in taking it as a donation for educational purposes.

If it's the school I'm thinking of, I believe I have photos somewhere.

I've been curious myself, I remember not really trusting Subarust's airbag while bouncing along ruddy rallycross sites.  I kept expecting a face-full of Takata.

YES!  That's the one!

You could reach out to your local fire and/or police department and see if the want them for relatively low yield bomb disposal practice?

Request attendance at the event.

Streetwiseguy said:

Do not blow it off face down.  Unless you are in a large open area, I guess.  I don't know how high it would go, but I'm betting quite.

They go pretty high, especially if you tape two face-to-face and set them off at the same time. 

In reply to EvanB :

I meant to tell you, the steering wheel airbag from the Mini has an explosive charge separate from the bag.

This is nice because the thing can be removed without needing to acquire one of those de-bagged steering wheel cover things.

Also, do you have any lengths of pipe around, oh, 5" inside diameter or so?  And access to a long field?

Actually, no, better idea.  No need for a long field, just a long pipe that can be secured to the ground, and enough water balloons to fill the pipe.

Water balloons full of oatmeal.

...this may actually be a worse idea, if the pipe isn't strong enough.

Okay, new idea, do you have a post hole digger?

Has there been any reports of airbags going off in junkyards etc ?  Seems that if it was a problem we would have 30 plus years of reports.

Does it need 12v to activate ?