Pennsylvania Launches IPS-Designed Propane Cylinder Recycling Pilot

Harrisburg, PA (July 28, 2026) — Representatives from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PA DEP), the Centre County Recycling and Refuse Authority (CCRRA), Industrial Propane Services, Inc. (IPS) and the Pennsylvania Recycling Markets Center (RMC) gathered on July 28 to celebrate a leap forward in environmental safety and materials recovery. 

RMC has officially presented the annual William M. Heenan, Jr. Markets Development Award jointly to CCRRA and IPS for their collaborative effort in collaborating a pilot of a state-wide recycling market for safely emptied propane cylinders, utilizing a first-of-its-kind portable propane extraction and steel recovery unit. Under Recycling Markets Center leadership during the pilot evaluation, the Centre County Recycling and Refuse Authority safely emptied and rendered for mill ready applications approximately 22,000 cylinders. 

Every year, Americans purchase between 40 and 60 million disposable one-pound propane cylinders for camping, tailgating and residential outdoor cooking. An estimated 75% of these single-use cylinders end up in traditional trash bins, recycling carts, landfills or as litter. When compacted in traditional sanitation trucks or processed at Materials Recovery Facilities (MRFs), “empty” cylinders —which frequently retain residual gas and pressure — present highly volatile conditions, causing severe risks of explosions and fires that endanger lives and destroy infrastructure. 

Processing them manually has historically been an economic burden for local governments, costing between $10 to $25 per cylinder to safely transport, depressurize, puncture and prepare for scrap metal recycling. To solve this crisis, RMC and equipment vendor IPS engineered a mobile, high-efficiency propane extraction steel recovery unit. 

This groundbreaking system evacuates and captures the unused propane for future beneficial reuse while safely crushing and cleaning the steel cylinders into a premium, mill-ready scrap commodity. Supported and recognized by the PA DEP, this system is lauded as the first portable commercial-scale, publicly available recovery system of its kind in the United States. The success of the portable unit has already established a highly scalable paradigm, drastically reducing the high fiscal demands traditionally placed on municipal waste budgets. 

Funds provided through the Pennsylvania recycling fund managed by the PA DEP were used to offset costs of the project.