A clever graduate has used 80 discarded vape batteries to power his e-scooter—and to make a point about waste.
It’s wild that we’re wasting lithium batteries like that.
Or that they are considered disposable by the people making and buying them
These should be banned
These should be banned
Agreed. As somebody who vapes, myself, it drives me crazy seeing discarded batteries littering the streets around here. The only legitimate use I’ve seen for disposable vapes was for use in prisons. There’s a company that makes disposable vapes that are designed with intentionally flimsy materials, so that no part of it can be fashioned into a weapon or be used to start fires.
But for the average, non-incarcerated user, there’s no excuse for it. They’re more expensive in the long run, and far worse for the environment. If you’re gonna vape, just buy yourself a proper mod kit, where there is much less waste produced.
I’d also support a ban on these if the US government hadn’t just completely wiped out 99% of the rest of the market with the PMTA and labeling juice and hardware as “tobacco products” even though they contain zero tobacco and aren’t used to consume tobacco. Outside a handful of sketchy headshops, I can’t find juice, coils, or mods anywhere in my city of 250k+ and I can’t buy them online anymore either. Wiping out the disposable market, something available at your local convenience store, will probably be the final nail in the coffin for the whole industry.
Don’t be alarmed though, cigarettes will still remain available at all major (and minor) retailers nationwide.
While I agree with the hardware part of it (makes it a pain in the ass to order coils online, as I have to sign for the delivery but I work nights and am usually sleeping during the 8-hour delivery window), I have to disagree when it comes to juice. I don’t see an issue with that being regulated as a tobacco product, since the nicotine in most juices is still extracted from tobacco plants (usually from the same tobacco farms that provide leaf to cigarette manufacturers), and the sale of juice should absolutely be restricted from minors.
Though, the current regulations we have aren’t exactly adequate, and absolutely need to be reformed. As an adult, I shouldn’t have as much issue as I do just trying to order consumables for my device.
The math really doesn’t check out on them, for the price of just two of these you can buy a bottle of vape juice, and a replaceable pod based vape from a company like OXVA. Once you’ve bought three that covers the cost of more pods and more juice and you’re set for way longer. Still kinda bad since the pods are technically disposable but they last longer, they’re far smaller in size, and they don’t have a lithium ion battery. I see people buy these things for convenience, and I admit I did once when I had lost my vape and was waiting for the replacement to come in. But I can’t imagine throwing an entire device away every month or so.
That’s what happens when producers of consumer items are not regulated. There’s no downside besides cost, so producers use the cheapest method available to get their product to market.
There’s a video on YT about a guy repairing a single use cock ring. A viewer apparently sent in his used cock ring for repair. Creator discovers it doesn’t work because of a corroded battery connection. I think he later finds the battery at a local store or orders it online. Replaced the battery and the sex toy is now functioning again.
He even adds some liquid resistance and warranties the item against further damage (or so he says, haha)
I think nicotine does something to people’s brains, rendering them unable to consider consequences.
Funny, but the real problem is that they’re allowed to be marketed as “disposable” in the first place. I’m surprised there haven’t been more reports of “random” trash fires that were really from lithium batteries improperly disposed of.
The craziest thing is pretty much all of those “disposable” batteries are actually rechargeable, they just lack a circuit to do so.
Even worse, at least for Washington State disposable cannabis vapes, is that they have USB-C ports, recharge, and use the same 510 format ceramic vaporizer cylinders as the lower-impact disposable cartridges for reusable batteries, but everything is unthreaded and glued together and it’s marked as disposable. It’s absolutely insane to me that a device with an 80mAh battery, USB-C port, and recharging circuit would be sold like it was the equivalent of a soda can.
All they have to do is put a 510 thread into the vape, and it could be reused dozens of times, but they want to keep you buying the marked-up disposables.
They are pretty convenient for smoking discretely, but whenever I buy one I end up mining the battery and recharge circuit out of it, and either using it in a project, or chuck the whole thing in the e-waste bin at my office in hopes that it will get shipped somewhere better than a landfill.
This is why I hate disposables. There is a ton of waste around them between the plastic and circuitry and battery.
Granted, pre-filled atomizers are only marginally better, unless they start selling recreational vape juice and people start dripping pot. The convenience of a vaporizer just can’t be beat though. Near instant action and clothes don’t reek.
It’s a lot like “flushable wipes” and the fact that they should not be flushed and will clog your plumbing.
This is why I hate disposables. There is a ton of waste around them between the plastic and circuitry and battery.
Granted, pre-filled atomizers are only marginally better, unless they start selling recreational vape juice and people start dripping pot. The convenience of a vaporizer just can’t be beat though. Near instant action and clothes don’t reek.
Addiction. That is what nicotine does to peoples brains. It makes people ignore the consequences to their own body. (I say this while toking on a vape. However, I haven’t smoked a cigarette in a while, so that is nice.)
People are just generally idiots.
so i dislike regular vapes because of the amount of children using them, but disposable vapes truly are the worst of the worst. they need to be banned asap
Most of disposable things are the worst, we should ban as much as we can. But for that, we need regulation, and some more efforts
Yeah, we need to get to zero waste as quickly as possible.
As a person who uses a vape, most of the “save the children” stuff is FUD. Bluntly, underage tobacco users never went away. The fact that many of those users switched to vaping is unsurprising. The fact that they got their hands on tobacco products before vaping because popular, and got their hands on vape products when they because popular is the point. It’s not a matter of what products they get their hands on, it’s that they can get their hands on them at all.
So what’s the solution? Simple: enforcement. The tobacco enforcement has been so lackluster that shops like gas stations hardly care if they’re selling to someone underage. Certainly the owner just wants to see the product leave the store so he can get paid, and the cashier doesn’t get paid enough to give a shit either way. With enforcement being so poor, most companies face relatively minor fines if caught… And that’s only if they’re caught. Cashier’s face no reprocussions. So there’s no real motivation to even enforce the rules. Sure it’s “illegal” but so is speeding, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t gone over the posted speed limit at some point… Many do it almost constantly, like it’s a game of “how much can I speed before someone notices” spoiler: a lot.
Flavorings are not the problem. I’m a full assed adult and I like fruity flavors. Underage users still smoked when it was 100% tobacco products, which to many, taste like crap. They still used it. Child resistant packaging, which is a big factor contributing to the whole disposable craze, is also not helping. Sure, have difficult to open packaging on concentrated bottles of the liquid… Drinking that stuff straight is bad and kids are stupid enough to do it… So that’s good, but making it difficult or impossible to make refillable vape products due to child resistant packaging is insanity.
My main vape is very old, it doesn’t have any child restraints on it, because I’m an adult and I don’t let children near it… Because I’m responsible. Everything about it is reusable, besides three very specific items. 1. Cotton. It’s referred to as “wicking material” and gets directly exposed to both the liquid, and the coil that vaporizes it… So it gets damaged over time. It’s cotton. No big deal. 2. The coil. It doesn’t need changing nearly as often as the cotton, but eventually, due to the harsh operating conditions, it burns out, like a lightbulb… Maybe every month or two, it needs replacing. 3. The liquid. This is just obvious.
So for a small pile of cotton, and a single small piece of resistance wire for the coil, plus some liquid, I can happily vape for a few months. My type of vape is referred to as a “squonk RDA”. And they’re banned because of the child resistant laws. I cannot buy a replacement. I’ve had several of the same kind of unit, and I like this one the most and it’s also lasted the longest. When it fails, either I need to find a way to fix it myself, or I need to go to something more wasteful. The unit uses 18650 removable and rechargable batteries, though, I’ve had some that use 21700 as well (same thing just slightly larger). I’ve burned out maybe two 18650 batteries in the ~5 years I’ve been using this thing. Around one every 2-3 years, which is pretty normal for daily use. I spend maybe 15 minutes a month rebuilding it to replace the cotton (and coil, if required), and that’s it.
It’s appalling to me that anyone uses disposable vapes. It’s actually more environmentally friendly to simply smoke actual cigarettes, compared to what disposables are doing to the environment. Most of the FUD sprouting surrounding vapes is a product of lobbying and infighting with cigarette manufacturers; they want people to keep killing themselves with their products, not move to something less harmful and less costly, chewing into their dwindling profits, so they manufactured a narrative to “save the children” and none of the proposals put forward have actually moved the needle on underage tobacco use. All the laws have done is make it harder for legal users to obtain and use a less harmful alternative to cigarettes, which was the point all along. If it’s so difficult to use, people will just keep using the brain-dead simple combustible tobacco products that they always have, putting another nail in the coffin as they do.
And I get it. Underage tobacco use in any form isn’t great. So the government should enforce the laws that already exist and make it difficult or impossible for minors to get their hands on tobacco products including vapes. We don’t need more laws with vaping, we need enforcement of the laws that already exist. I’m a vaper and I believe that people who are underage should not have access to vape products (or any other tobacco products). Period. I’m in agreement with that entirely, but punishing me and the environment so that it’s “harder for underage users” is only making my life more difficult, and doing real damage to the environment.
should be considered as a straw!
they’re worse than straws imo, straws at least have a use for disabled people, children, and others who need them for independence.
Not to mention the actively toxic chemicals used in batteries or the explosive potential of venting cells
I fucking hate disposable vapes and any single-use electronics. So wasteful. I bet a lot of people who use disposable vapes would consider themselves to be environmentally-conscious.
Discarded lithium batteries are also a fire hazard.
These seem like a great opportunity for a deposit, like many states have for bottles and cans. Pay a few bucks extra when you buy the device, and get it back when you return it.
I don’t vape, but when I received a depleted disposable vape from a roommate, I opened it up to find the battery was perfectly rechargeable. Such a waste and it is quite hazardous too to dispose in regular trash.
We need more of this out in the open to demonstrate: A) how bad e-waste is, and B) how useful recycling is.
Good on this guy for making cool shit to do such things.
Damn I wish more vape places were like the one I go to locally. They ask people who buy the disposals to drop them off back at the shop and they then recycle all of them after the box fills up.
Is there anything we can do with lithium to return it to its unused state? Can it be chemically refined back to its original state or does the electrical usage permanently alter it?
They are in fact very recyclable but these vapes are sold as disposable.
I’ve always preferred reusable batteries. sure you still dispose of the carts but at least you get to use the battery again. I kinda want a dab thing that does on a vape battery so you can scrape wax into it and vape it on the go
You can still break down the vape and take the battery out of it to be recycled. Problem is that people just trash them instead of tossing it with electronics recycling (if that’s even considered cool). Maybe as we see battery recycling we will see people scrounging for these to turn in same as aluminum and glass bottles/cans.
The problem is these vapes are usually made really difficult to crack open. A lot of vape stores around me are taking them back now to recycle for you but still.
Huh? A hammer will take care of that easy peasy. Good chance someone will figure out a way for a machine to break them open and sort out the battery from the rest or just have people smacking them with hammers or mallets.
Yes, which is wrong. My question was more about lithium batteries in general, not these specific batteries.
Personally I think we need to hold waste management companies more accountable. I feel like there should be sorting done to some degree to filter out compostable waste, recyclable materials, and true waste. That way we can still have a sustainable planet even when individuals do not have a sustainable mindset
I wouldn’t call it the unused state, but when recycled in a proper facility, the material recovered from lithium ion batteries can be used again in future battery production. Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2xrarUWVRQ&t=270s
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That’s what I was curious about. We have an EV and one of the biggest things is the lithium mining for the batteries being awful for the environment and awful treatment of workers. With EV’s becoming more popular and other types of batteries using lithium then I think lithium recycling is going to be very important to the future and was wondering if anything had been established. Even a close to unused state allowing it to be put back into an EV for 95% capacity is better than just throwing it away.
I will definitely check out the video though
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I had a few where the battery died while there was still stuff to vape in it. Doubly wasteful. I then switched to a concentrate vape and buying live rosin/resin
I think a ton of the disposable vapes are THC ones being bought by travelers from states without legal pot. People not worried about being caught with a illegal device buying them… Wtf you doing?
It’s just a convenience thing. Disposable vapes can’t be charged and the battery lives the life of the vape. I have not personally seen a non-disposable vape battery that has a user servicable battery compartment for 510 threaded vape cartridges either fwiw.
Lithium ion batteries are basically never recycled on average. Regardless of where batteries are used though you usually find that something like 5% or less of them are actually recycled. Considering lithium ion batteries last less than 10 years and every piece of consumer electronics that isn’t bound to a cable nowadays has them i’m guessing we waste a lot more battery volume in the rest of our day to day devices. Cars, laptops, cell phones, ebikes, escooters, vapes, nintendo switches and all kinds of kids toys, solar generator batteries etc etc etc all contribute to the problem and they are ubiquitous.
I’m 100% for a lithium ion battery recycling deposit fee. I think it should be fairly expensive too, maybe 50% of the battery replacement cost or more of a quality battery replacement and based on gram weight of sold battery in a product. The toxic chemicals that get into the environment from these things catching fire when improperly disposed after long enough timeframe is no joke and we shouldn’t treat it like one.
A lot of disposal vapes CAN be charged, they just can’t be refilled!
I think mostly people buy disposables because they don’t know how 510 batteries work. Or sometimes the strain you want is only available as a disposable.
I don’t like disposables because I’ve ran out of battery when 1/3 if the product was left. I’ve switched to concentrates and a vape that handles them.
