A clever graduate has used 80 discarded vape batteries to power his e-scooter—and to make a point about waste.
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!