9 Ideas for What to do with old motorcycle helmet (2023)

Whenever a rider decides to buy a helmet, the thought of getting rid of the old expensive but favorite helmet can be fretful. It is because we all love the look of our helmets, and we want them to stay forever. We can’t bear the thought of parting with our old ones.

But if anyone is worried about what to do with old motorcycle helmet, they should read this article in its entirety. 

There are other ways to utilize old motorcycle helmets instead of wearing them, and one of these methods will make it easy for you to part with your old helmet. 

The truth is that most people who ride motorcycles are not so crazy about their old helmets and other accessories.

However, it would be best to keep in mind the vital things while purchasing a new helmet for yourself. It is advisable that you try to get a helmet that will protect your head from injuries and enhance your appearance. Motorcycle helmets do more than just provide a stylish accessory for you; they play a crucial role in ensuring your safety.

When buying a helmet, the first factor you should consider is selecting the color for your motorcycle helmet. As per the safety standards, motorcycle helmets should have good visibility and fit snugly.

Is it time for you to stop riding your motorcycle with a lovely helmet? Before you let your helmet go, think about these creative ways to keep your old helmet out of the landfill.

Make your helmet archive

If you are wondering what to do with old motorcycle helmets, and you are an avid motorcyclist, you may have some useless motorcycle helmets lying around in your house that you no longer use. If you try to peek into your memory, you will have fond memories of these old helmets. They may have been a part of your life for years, and now they are just collecting dust in your attic.

Instead of letting them take up valuable space, you can keep them organized way. Create a storage shelf or a display for your old helmets and ensure they can be stored safely.

The best place to create an archive for your old helmets is in the garage or on the roof. These places are safe and do not pose any threat to your helmet.

If you have enough space, you can even make a collection of all the old and new helmets that you own. If you think your collection is incomplete, you can always add to it. There are many reasons you should have a collection of your helmets.

You can start with the fact that you can always use them in case you get a head injury. Helmets are also used as a fashion accessory, and you can wear them to your next bike rally or a motorcycle event. 

Helmet collection helps you remember your past. You can store your old helmets in a safe place to easily find them when you need them.

You can browse through your collection of old helmets and relive their memories. It will help you remember the times when you were riding your first bike.

You can even use the internet to create a virtual helmet museum. This way, you can store your old helmets and showcase them online.

Do apart the helmet components and teach your children what it is made of?

It is imperative to teach your children what a helmet is and what it does. Children are curious and will often try to remove the helmet if you don’t explain why they cannot do so.

Explain to them that the helmet is a safety device, and you will teach them how to put it on correctly when they are old enough.

When teaching them this lesson, be sure to demonstrate to them how you put it on correctly. Several different pieces work together to protect your head from injury.

The helmet has an outer shell made from plastic, foam, and metal. The soft foam padding provides a comfortable and snug fit, while the metal protects your head from impact. An EPS liner absorbs the impact force and protects the skull. A chin strap secures the helmet on your head. The chin cup is made of a hard plastic material that protects your chin.

You can also teach them how a motorcycle helmet works, how to remove it correctly, and how to secure the helmet to the motorcycle. 

Test your helmet brand

Fortunately, you have never had a motorcycle accident on the road. You have been trusting a particular brand for a long time, so you would like to buy only that motorcycle helmet brand without any experiment.

 Now that you have purchased a modern helmet, you can test the quality of your old helmet without fear of deterioration.

You can test the strength of the helmet’s outer shell by hitting it with a hammer or by giving an artificial blow from a certain angle. You can also test the helmet using a metal ball, a softball, a bowling ball, or a baseball.

The Sharp and Snell Foundation test helmets using dummy heads and machine-generated impact force. They test helmets by giving an impact force from a certain angle at the helmet’s back, side, top, or front, and then the impact angle is measured and recorded.

You can also test the chin strap’s durability by pulling it hard.

In addition to the above tests, you can also test the durability of the helmet liner by putting some water inside the helmet and letting it soak for a few days. When you are done testing, you will have the opportunity to share your experience with other motorcycle riders.

Painting skills

An old helmet can help you if you are curious about the art techniques. You can practice and learn new painting skills on your old helmet. Expired helmets can be painted and decorated easily. 

You can make beautiful art designs with the help of paint and brushes. You can even customize the color and layout of your motorcycle helmet using available stickers and decals. You can also apply different patterns and shapes to give your motorcycle helmet a unique look.

You can also make beautiful designs with the help of a stencil. If you want to make the best-looking stencil, you need to know the proper techniques and tricks. 

If you have made a display shelf for your helmet collection, you might want to make some artwork on them. Decorated helmets are great additions to your collection, and it is a great way to show off your collection after applying short detailing and shading it.

Donate Motorcycle Helmet

Motorcycling involves significant risks and it’s important to prioritize safety. Wearing the right protective equipment, in particular a helmet, is essential. However, it’s important to understand that using an old or expired helmet significantly increases the risk of serious injury.
Although the saying “safety comes first” is common knowledge, many people don’t give safety the attention it deserves. When it comes to helmets, some cyclists mistakenly believe that their old helmets are still safe to use as long as they’re not completely worn out. Unfortunately, this assumption is wrong, as old and expired helmets are inherently unsafe and significantly increase the likelihood of serious injury.
Given the potential risks involved, it is strongly recommended that you reuse your old helmet for other applicable objectives instead of using it for motorcycle riding. In this way, you contribute to your own safety and well-being. Some of the objectives are explained below.

Where to donate motorcycle helmets

1. Donate your helmet to emergency fire services

Don’t let your old or expired helmet sit anywhere in the trash when you’re done with it. It needs to be donated to an emergency fire service instead.

Helmets are an essential part of emergency fire services in that they help keep the first responders safe. If a firefighter needs to go to an accident scene and isn’t wearing a helmet, they might get seriously injured. 

An old or expired helmet might not be used to protect the firefighters, but it can be used to train the new fire staff and Your helmet donations can be helpful to train them.

Local emergency services like fire or police departments often has to recruit new employees. The new firefighters need training after the retirement of skilled firefighters and the departments always need such donations to use in new ways of training in the drills and exercises.

2. Donate your helmet to emergency medical services

If you have an old or expired helmet, you can donate it to the emergency services of hospitals or clinics. You can also donate it to organizations that provide rescue services voluntarily. They’ll use the helmets for various purposes. 

It can be used to train new staff on how to wear out the helmet from a motorcyclist’s head after a crash. But what do they do after a motorcycle crash? 

3. Devote your helmet to other motorcyclists

A new motorcyclist is about to make his first ride, and he needs a helmet. He has just bought himself a new helmet and wants to keep it from deteriorating too soon. He wants to leave his new helmet unattended until he is able to cruise on the highway.

You can donate your used motorcycle helmets to such new motorcyclists who have just started their riding careers. Helmet donations are one of the best ways to help others.

The helmet you wear when you ride a motorcycle has a crucial role in keeping you safe as you navigate the roads. It protects your head, neck, and jaw from injury when you fall off your bike.

You can contact the police departments and training schools that accept helmet donations to train new bikers.

Turn your helmet into a food bowl.

Sometimes life gives you lemons, and sometimes life gives you giant lemons, and you have to find a way to make lemonade. And if you’re creative, you might find a brilliant way.

The same goes here…! Old motorcycle helmets aren’t just being thrown out; they are being put to good use.

Here is how to make a popcorn bowl: Take an old bike helmet; you don’t even need to do anything fancy – just the standard motorcycle helmet with the visor, padding, etc.

The first thing you need to make a popcorn bowl is to fix the visor. For this purpose, apply some glue along the edge of the visor to bond it with the helmet shell. 

Remove the dirty helmet liner and replace it with a new one made with a hygienically approved material. The face shield area also needs foam padding applied internally to keep the food safe from external temperature.

Attach a fancy rope to both sides of the helmet with screws to make it easier to lift the bowl full of popcorn. The chinstrap can also be used to hold the bowl instead of mounting a string. 

Grow small plants in your old helmet

It’s easy to grow plants in plastic bags or hanging baskets, but a helmet is different from a hanging basket. It has a tight, warm environment with little light. And you can’t just stick the plants into the inside of the helmet. They need to be able to breathe.

If you are going to put this idea into practice, you should only grow small and seasonal plants that don’t require a lot of water, soil, or sunlight.

Recycle old motorcycle helmets

Would motorcycle helmet recycling be a good idea?

The answer to this question depends on what kind of parts are found in the composition of the helmet. This requires understanding the structure of the helmet. Here are the main parts and the possibilities for sending them to the local motorcycle helmet recycling center.

Can you recycle motorcycle helmets?

Outer Shell

Most of the helmet consist of plastic shell and manufacturers use ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene), Polycarbonate & Lexan, or Advanced Thermoset Resin (ATR) to manufacture motorcycle helmet outer shells. These materials are a kind of plastic and can be recycled, but they can be used in a limited way once recycled.

Today, the most common materials used to make plastic shell are ABS and polycarbonate. They are solid, lightweight, and able to use in the injection molding process.

Limited helmets are also made of fiberglass and carbon fiber, and these are solid materials but recycling them is not an easy process.

Visor

The helmet is designed to protect heads from injuries in case of an accident. A glass visor is also provided in a full-face motorcycle helmet to protect riders’ eyes from dirt, air, flying moths, and debris. 

A helmet visor is a transparent face shield made of clear type polycarbonate and ABS materials, and its thickness varies from 2mm to 3.5mm. You can add a visor to the recyclable parts of a motorcycle helmet.

Can you recycle EPS-Styrofoam?

The secondary protective layer under the outer shell of the motorcycle helmet is named EPS Liner. It is made of Styrofoam and plays its role in reducing the impact force while the rider involves in an accident. 

Unfortunately, Styrofoam is an often misunderstood product since, to most people, it evokes images of disposable, single-use products. But in fact, Styrofoam is a rigid, durable, non-biodegradable plastic used for insulation and packaging.

Styrofoam, or polystyrene, is lightweight, flexible, and resistant to heat, water, and rot. While it has a low carbon footprint and it’s often difficult for recycling center to process.

Some environmentalists have suggested that it ends up in landfills and oceans, where it breaks down into tiny pieces that damage wildlife.

Recycling of Helmet Foam Padding

Inside the motorcycle helmet, soft padding is provided for the safety and comfort of the rider. Helmet padding is made of polyurethane foam and is very difficult to recycle, and some recycling centers accept this type of foam for recycling.

This type of foam cannot be recycled by conventional heating. The foam is first cut or torn into small pieces and then reassembled to form any sort of padding or mattress.

As a result, there are no practical or valuable means for recycling these types of helmet padding.

Recycling the Chinstrap

The helmet straps are usually attached to the helmet using a snap, Velcro, buckles, or screws, and keep the helmet on your head while riding at high speed.

A chinstrap is a Velcro made of Nylon or Kevlar, and these materials can be added to the recycling process to make different items.  

You can also use Velcro by separating it from your motorcycle helmet and attaching it to other items you need to fasten.

Some Other Ideas

• If you are an old biker and have a lot of expired helmets in your store. Examine every helmet component and select those parts that are in good condition to reuse in future. 
• Modify your old helmet into a bird’s nest. 
• You can set your old helmet as a shooting target practice after coloring it.
• If you think you don’t have an opportunity to utilize your old helmet, you can dispose of it in the regular trash.

Conclusion: what to do with old motorcycle helmet

You have read many ways to dispose of your old helmet in the above article. You can choose any method as per your choice and convenience.

But here I would like to let you know my choice. Because I love riding a motorcycle, I want to keep every moment and everything associated with riding a bike as a souvenir. So, in my opinion, the best place for expired helmets is a beautiful commemorative shelf.

This is the best place for your old helmet because you can put it attractively and beautifully. You can make it look good by painting the inside of the shelf or simply putting some flowers on it.

Finally, your research on what to do with old motorcycle helmet ends here.

FAQs

Do motorcycle helmets go bad?

Yes, over time, different components of helmets become degraded. As per experts ‘ recommendations, you need to replace your old helmet after three to five years.

Can I sell my old motorcycle helmet?

Yes, You can sell a used helmet, but you must make sure that the helmet does not expire and is not in unhealthy condition. There may be two reasons to sell a used helmet; it does not match your choice or head size.