In 2022, they found more than 40 tonnes of lithium from single-use vapes was discarded, which is the same amount used to power 5,000 electric vehicles.
oh, there’s fields and fields of entire cars just sitting in all inhabited remote places. it’s becoming a real problem in Alaska. there’s towns there literally getting buried in dead cars because it’s too expensive to take them anywhere else.
generally if you think “i wonder if this type of thing is getting disposed of properly or if it’s a huge ecological problem” the answer is always the latter. the humans in charge don’t care about the environment. that’s not profitable.
Also the cells are typically in pretty good condition, as the vape tends to run out of the flavoured/nicotine liquid stuff before the battery gets down to a state of charge that is bad for long term storage.
Suicide drones use them too. Best energy density at the required power levels. (Zinc-air batteries are slightly better but you can’t extract the energy in minutes.)
Makes me wonder how many electric car batteries worth of lithium and rare earth metals is just lying in gutters around the world.
For the UK alone:
Source
oh, there’s fields and fields of entire cars just sitting in all inhabited remote places. it’s becoming a real problem in Alaska. there’s towns there literally getting buried in dead cars because it’s too expensive to take them anywhere else.
generally if you think “i wonder if this type of thing is getting disposed of properly or if it’s a huge ecological problem” the answer is always the latter. the humans in charge don’t care about the environment. that’s not profitable.
Also the cells are typically in pretty good condition, as the vape tends to run out of the flavoured/nicotine liquid stuff before the battery gets down to a state of charge that is bad for long term storage.
That’s not true at all? It’s literally always the battery that runs out first. Else you would burn the coils in them.
They’re rechargeable lithium batteries, they should last years. Not a week.
True, if you could recharge them, but they don’t include ports to do so.
Which is why it’s a waste of good lithium cells, as the guy you replied to was saying
So why use rechargeable batteries at all?
Suicide drones use them too. Best energy density at the required power levels. (Zinc-air batteries are slightly better but you can’t extract the energy in minutes.)
https://youtu.be/ehp23hrrEHY
So much that people have started making DIY stuff out of them.