Garbage bin or recycling bin?

Garbage bin, unless recycling centers can take foam now.

Before that, record yourself (or a brave friend) stomping on it and post it on Youtube.

give it away to someone of thrift store it.. if its not broken

Trash, and if it's "unsafe" to use anymore, smash it enough so nobody pulls it out of the trash and tries to use it.

Good idea.

If it's wrecked maybe a lbs would take it to put it on display, if they don't already have one.

Thanks. Wish I could take the credit, but I got it from a safety website on baby car seat safety. They recommend you destroy it at its expiration date to avoid anybody else using it.

Congrats on the baby, by the way. Hope you're finding the occasional day to ride.

Car seats have expiration dates?

Car racing helmets have a certification that expires (the actual expiration might differ depending on the organization hosting a particular event, like wheel-to-wheel road racing versus autocrossing). In SCCA racing, for example, new certifications come out every five years; the allowed versions are the current and the one previous. This keeps people from using helmets more than ten years old.

Do baby car seats "expire" the same way?

They expire 5-7 years from manufacture date due to the plastic breaking down and becoming brittle. I'm sure there is a safe margin, but we're lucky that my brother gave me his seat he got when he had his son 5 years ago. Our boy will grow out of it just months before its expiration date.

I'm now wishing I had destroyed the helmet I through away a few months ago.

I cracked it when I crashed while mountain biking and went head first into a tree, but the crack was subtle and I didn't notice it for several weeks, and after several more rides using it.

Ok, I could see the brittle aspect, especially since so many seats just stay in the car while it's parked outdoors. A lot of vehicle glass is UV resistant, but not everybody's, so it's a lot simpler for them to give an expiration date rather than say, "If you drive the cars on this list, you can keep it for 8 years; if you have one of these cars, you get 5 years; etc etc etc".

I donate my expired full face motorcycle helmets to our local FD/PD to use for training their medics on treating MC accident victims who are wearing their helmets at the time of accident. Don't know if there's a need for something similar with bicycle helmets, but you might call your local FD to find out.

Cool. I still wish I had donated my previous car to the FD/PD rather than sell it to a coworker (I would have kept it a lot longer, too). One of my friends did just that with the bare chassis of a similar car after he had parted it out, and he was there to watch them tear it in half with their rescue gear.

Oh better - strap a bag of sand in there, about the weight of your head, then fix a rope to it so you can swing it around and smash it on to your driveway at high velocity. Record that!

Then put it in the garbage.

We play helmet baseball at the shop when customers leave their old helmets.