Stove fuel source and waste (trash)

I save all my empty Coleman gallon cans. Have a nice row now in my garage. They can be used for other chemicals. Might cut them up sometime for some wallpaper in the gear room or garage.
Duane

Burned over 10 gallons of gasoline get back and forth from the trailhead. Burned a few ounces of stove fuel over the course of the weekend. Heet bottles can be rinsed out and recycled. Those Coleman jugs I leave out on the patio for a day or two so they are completely dried out. They get recycled also. So do gas canisters. Just another can. I do not concern myself with the thoughts of which fuel is cleanest burning. So small a matter in the scheme of things.

Yeah, rain forest being wiped out for charcoal, primates slaughtered for bush meat, large African animals pushed to extinction for horns and ivory, whales still being harvested by Asian countries, oil spills threatening oceans – lakes – rivers around the world and on and on and on … not all that concerned about a bit of BPing stove fuel. Look up in the sky and imagine the billions of gallons being burned above us by aircraft alone.

Individual conservation is honorable but realistically ever continuing population expansion negates that pretty quickly… it's just a matter of time. Only thing to save us now would be a world wide pandemic.

Enjoy it while it you can :), jimmyb

backpacking gear is the one little corner of our lives that we can get perfect! Or at least try.

e.g. there are a lot of folks who strongly prefer U.S. made items. You can be a purist about that for backpacking gear much more easily than for everything else in life.

personally, I'm struggling with the "so many ziploc bags" issue.

I've switched to Everclear. is glass any better or worse than the other fuel container materials?

Well, this is probably pointless since it's very hard to take into account all the factors. But for what it's worth it would seem that just from a container standpoint, and leaving all other issues aside, white gas and denatured alcohol would come in at the top, since they can be had in one-gallon steel cans. Given the high recyclability of steel and the fact that larger containers use less material per ounce of contents than smaller containers.
And since WG has more energy per unit of volume than alcohol that might give the edge to WG.

But in the end, other things we do make a much bigger difference.

Maybe the best answer is to go no-cook – and probably the lightest as well.

"5. On a BTU basis is one fuel source really that much more green?"

Sure. Wood. The twigs are already laying on the ground starting to decompose. Emissions from the burning process are another matter, of course. But I'd guess that a small, twig fire overall is greener than the process of making other fuels and containers and then burning that fuel.

Automotive fuel – gasoline or diesel – are produced and transported much more efficiently in bulk than small containers of butane, WG, EtOH, Esbit, or propane ever are. Nothing but wood is as cheap per BTU and no one is selling you any fuel for less than it cost them (in materials, energy, and labor) to make, transport, and market that item.

Alas, diesel fuel smells bad – a little when it burns and a lot when it leaks. And automotive gasoline is more explosive (cause it's designed and blended to go "boom" very quickly, in your engine) than white gas.

I'd agree that for carbon emissions, found wood has the lowest impact. Try not to breathe the smoke.

Theoretically, the higher hydrogen:carbon ratio in a fuel, the less the carbon emissions for a given heat output. But while methane (natural gas) DOES have lower carbon emissions than other fossil-fuel choices, it's not a choice for us while backpacking. From butane to diesel it is a pretty tight range of carbon emissions per heat output.

Drive a compact car to the trailhead. Carpool to get there. Live, as I do, where you can hike our your own door. Those choices save many gallons of fuel on each trip, not a few ounces between one BPing fuel and another.

And eat cold food.