Disposable vapes are indefensible. Many, or maybe most, of them contain rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, but manufacturers prefer to sell new ones.
To make a point about how wasteful this practice is—and to also make a pretty rad project and video—Chris Doel took 130 disposable vape batteries (the bigger “3,500 puff” types with model 20400 cells) found littered at a music festival and converted them into a 48-volt, 1,500-watt e-bike battery, one that powered an e-bike with almost no pedaling more than 20 miles. You can see the whole build and watch Doel zoom along trails on his YouTube video.
Those little colored flavored vapes are IMHO one of the worst vapes. Once they’re done, there’s no replacing the flavor. I see them often at the rehab I work at. I’ve seen some with replaceable flavor cartridges, but those are also bad due to the excessive plastic waste.
I’m all for vapes as a means to quit, but they’re also excessively used as a means of maintaining the habit.
I’m not a vape user, but the model is the kind of thing that just makes me so angry.
In a world that makes sense:
- small, mostly metal vape chassis
- rechargeable, replaceable battery
- built-in glass reservoir with charging valve
- vape juice sold in medium to large recyclable cans with standard interface to the charging valve
In a world where Profit is God (the real world):
- disposable chassis
- disposable battery
- if it’s refillable at all, it’s via non-recyclable, mixed material, mostly plastic, proprietary cartridges and you can save 5% if you subscribe online for refills, 10% if you pay yearly, $5 credit if you refer a friend on social media using hashtag #smoovape
- probably gives you turbo cancer because the juice is made in a repurposed Freon plant that was inadequately converted and they just don’t answer the phone when the FDA or EPA call
We used to have a great vape market for those types of vapes. Since 2020 state and fed government has rinsed the market “for the kids” and basically created what we see now, a market of 98% disposable sold by overseas companies. Before that there were countless brands making batteries, tanks, etc. now a lot of smoke shops don’t even sell refillable vapes or liquid.
… What? I used to smoke a pack a day, now I just vape. I’ve never seen a smoke shop that doesn’t sell juice
Different legislation in different places. My country banned flavours, but they still sell disposables somehow.
My local shop has about 3 full 6 foot wide floor to ceiling bookcases of just disposables. Then there’s one shelf with one brand of juices and about 7 options.
I think part of it is something else - ease of use and ease of access.
The “world that makes sense” product exists already:
https://www.elementvape.com/box-mod-kitsWhile I was vaping I mixed my own liquids though, as the cost savings was immense and I could easily lower the nicotine mg/ml on my own until I quit it altogether.
Can’t buy nicotine from the wholesalers anymore to do that in the US. Feds made it illegal.
Yeah, they had started limiting what you could buy in Sweden as well. My last time mixing I bought a silly amount of 18mg/ml 10ml strong menthol bottles and large 70/30 PG/VG bottles and ended up with my own 3mg/ml mixture that still tasted menthol, although not as overwhelmingly so.
Stingy on letting you make your own vape but happy to let you stuff your lip with snus. Typical Sweden.
EU is behind the restrictions for vaping liquids, not Sweden. :)
https://health.ec.europa.eu/tobacco/product-regulation/electronic-cigarettes_en
You totally can. I don’t know exactly what the laws are because it’s intentionally not clear but it’s the same process as before, order from a diy website, it comes in the mail, make your stuff at home. I think the difference is that it’s harder for websites to get the license to sell it but there are still some sites out there.
I don’t vape nicotine, so those sorts of things are basically out of my reach. I wish I lived in a legal state and I could get liquid refill bottles.
The first thing you described is literally what we used to have. God I miss the good old days of vaping.
Yeah tbh I’ve never really seen anyone successfully quit through vaping. Nicotine pouches or lozenges are much more effective imo.
I’m sure there are plenty of exceptions, but like you said, the vast majority of people vaping are just maintaining.
I did. It took a while because I enjoyed it so much, but it worked better than anything else. It simulated the smoking experience, tasted great and was a fun little device to tinker with. Sure it made me look stupid but in return I got healthier lungs.
Of course I was wrapping my own coils and used a mech mod, the concept of a juul made it so stupidly easy to vape without understanding how it works and just programmed everyone to use cartridges.
And here we are.
When used correctly to wean and taper, vaping can be really helpful as a quit smoking aid.
In my experience many of the people who haven’t quit are self medicating for attention or depressive reasons. Of the folks I know who vape about half were diagnosed with ADHD later in life (30+) and quit after finding a stimulant medication that worked for them. The rest are unmedicated and self medicating with nicotine and coffee or energy drinks. Self medicating is overlooked in virtually every discussion about nicotine and I’d like to see it considered more often when the topic comes up instead of just leaping straight to “nicotine use bad” or “nicotine users should be punished” like most discussions do.
Edit: there’s also some interesting research re: nicotine’s neuroprotective properties that gets lost in the prohibition fervor
Assuming non-wasteful delivery methods, I’d still call that a win as vaping is generally less harmful to the health of the user.
Quitting is of course preferable, but I support harm reduction policies in general
I know quite a few people that have quit through vaping, and even if they hadn’t, vapes are definitely better for their health than cigarettes.
I just started vaping more AND smoking because I could vape in my dorm during winter…
There’s peanut butter in my chocolate!
There’s CHOCOLATE in my peanut butter!!!
imagining a giant Reese’s PB cup
There’s chocolate in my peanut butter in my chocolate!
The bonus for vapes is you can wean off nicotine at a super precise rate. You can mix your nicotine juice with more and more non-nicotine juice to achieve greater and greater levels of dilution until the nicotine dose you’re taking is so low that it doesn’t matter to stop.
Yeah, disposable vapes should be made illegal, not only are they lowering the bar for the access because they’re cheap and accessible to minors, not only because they are an e-waste, but because it wastes valuable lithium, also those are perfectly chargeable batteries, is a bit fucked up that it’s more profitable to use rechargeable lithium batteries than something disposable
is a bit fucked up that it’s more profitable to use rechargeable lithium batteries than something disposable
That’s because the global manufacturing industries have almost exclusively gone over to lithium-ion batteries. Disposable batteries are ceasing to be commodity items. It’s seriously difficult to find a D cell battery these days.
My evil side wants them to be more popular where I live so I can collect massive amounts of lithium batteries for free
cool! in no time at all, disposable vapes will usurp cigarette butts as the #1 form of litter across the globe! but in all seriousness, god bless this guy. hopefully his example will inspire people to be slightly less careless and slightly more cognizant of how they dispose of their waste (audience laughter turns to applause)
Hats off to the dude for not wasting the batteries. However, I would not want ass and balls near those cheap Chinese made lithium batteries.
aren’t pretty much all Li(Fe)Po cells made cheaply in China?
That’s a fair point, but I still don’t want them near my taint!
Perhaps it’s odd, but I have never seen anyone use a vape in public. Nor have I seen one just lying on the ground. I maybe need to get out the forest here and visit civilization for a bit again.
They are super common where weed is legal. People fly into somewhere like Denver for the weekend to catch a show. Rather than buying a reusable battery, they will get a disposable vape (and probably some gummies).
Then it ends up in the landfill or as litter. I am in favor of making these one time use electronics illegal (along with single use plastics like balloons, plastic silverware, etc… but that is another thread)
They aren’t even disposable, so it’s crazy to me how they can be sold as such.
Yeah, I live in legal weed state. The nearest dispensary is a mere 20 miles away. I’m not even sure they sell vapes. Flower and edibles for sure, but I have no idea if they sell vapes. (I’ve never been there-- weed just ain’t my thing). But I still don’t see any used ones tossed out. Maybe we are just neater people here and don’t litter.
Come to Canada, we have weed stores on every block, like Tim Hortons but actually beneficial to the people
I live closer to Winnipeg than I do to my state capital. We are often referred to as “Canada Lite” by other states.
Sounds like a win in my book!
Go to a nightclub sometime. Discounted vapes in the outside areas are a tripping Hazard.
Gigs and concerts are pretty grim for this now too.
Discarded vapes? The only immediate trip hazard of tripping on discounted vapes would be the mob of people trying to buy them.
Ain’t no night clubs within 100 miles of me. Plenty of bars, but no night clubs.
Despite the larger size and bright colors, they’re a bit more discreet than cigarettes. Most places that ban cigarettes equally ban vapes, so they’re often concealed more. That probably has a spillover effect to areas they’re allowed. They’re only activated when sucked, so, unlike a cigarette that’s burning whether you suck it or not, most people take a puff or 3 of vape and then go a few minutes without it. It’s not as obvious as a person deliberately smoking one whole cigarette.
But maybe they’re not around you. I think the other comments covered the locations well enough, sarcasm included. But if you suddenly smell something sweet like fruit or cereal, casually take a look for someone vaping
Oh I’ve seen pictures of them. Just haven’t seen one in the real world nor seen one tossed on the ground. I do suspect they just aren’t popular around me. Smokers around here probably prefer real cigarettes.
Eh, my coworker alternates between cigarettes and vape, and plenty of people vape or smoke in the parking lot here.
I’ve never seen a vape on the ground though, I think most at my office don’t use disposable vapes.
I mean, yeah. Have you ever been outside?
I probably spend more time you side than you do. I just mostly do it in a forest.
I guess you’ll have to start spending more time in high school bathrooms.
I had that misfortune when I was teaching math at my local school for 4 years.
really? they’re almost as common as cigarette butts once were now. are you a hermit?
I’ve never seen a discarded vape, but I’ve seen a lot of people vaping, as well as a lot of cigarettes and butts. That said, I spend almost zero time downtown, so my exposure is mostly my work parking lot and a few stores.
I wouldn’t claim to be all that enamored of humans as a rule. But I’m not a hermit in the classic sense.
The basement has been good to me to.
I so so want to purchase an ebike.But the companies don’t seem likely to stick around for long though.
You pretty much should only buy one from a shop that has a physical location near you and can do repairs. Like everybody around me sells Trek, so if I ever got one, it’d be a Trek with a Bosch motor. Bike shops will not repair ebikes they don’t sell, even though they’ll repair regular bikes. And neither Trek nor Bosch are going anywhere.
I see your point, but I also saw Juiced Bikes go out of business last month after 15 years in the industry.
I wouldn’t worry about it too much. The bikes are very simple and the battery pack can be rebuilt. Any decent bike shop should be able to repair an orphaned e-bike.
Most will not repair an ebikes outside of the brand they sell. I’d ask the shop first.
Perhaps where you live. I recently helped a young man get an e-bike, (somewhat mentally handicapped-- we raised funds to purchase the bike to get him to have better mobility), We got him an Aventon Cargo bike. The local bike shop plainly stated they would work on any e-bike you brought in. And that that all of the area bike shops were the same.
One does not turn away a paying customer.
In many parts of the states they do because their insurance won’t cover them working on those bikes.
That seems like a “you” problem at the polls in your state. Not an issue here.
Get one from Halfords then. They’ll repair any e-bike that they sell and they sell a wide variety of brands. Where I got mine from.
I bought one from Aventon. It was easy to repair and didn’t require anything special.
Engwe has been around for some time, have one of their bikes (M20). If a part fails, you just need to send them an email, and they’ll give you a price and picture of the part and they’ll send it out to you. I have had to replace my rear fender and the front light once and they’ve arrived quite fast (to Europe). Although they aren’t high quality bikes, they’re priced accordingly.
My problem with Ebikes is the number of regular bikes stolen. No way I want to haul a ebike up and down my basement stairs a couple times a day.
So? As long as they deliver the ebike, what do you care about the financial health of the company after that?
Damn, this warranty is still in effect for a few more weeks, and the company’s gone…
Proprietary spare parts. The motors might be off the shelf so you could grab parts from a different manufacturer. But controllers and batteries are usually proprietary making repairs much more complicated and cost-inefficient
I’m going to build one. Total cost will be >$1k for the mid drive motor and battery (not counting the bike itself), but it’ll be way faster than the street legal stuff they sell at stores. They’re dead simple since they’re just bikes with a motor and battery pack, so any shop could work on it.
If you want something cheaper, there are other simple retrofit options as well.
To be fair the supposedly reusable pod kits only lasted me about a month or maybe two before whatever sensor that activates it when you draw breaks (what’s wrong with buttons) .
That said all these disposables should at the very least be rechargeable it’s truly stupid to buy something with a single charge I bet half of these are sold at about 60 percent or so battery and who will know.
I much prefer buttons, except the one time a button got stuck and it continued to heat until the plastic melted in my pants. Shit needs a safety shutoff too.
Honestly the entire idea of disposable vapes should be scrapped.
I actually had that with the first ecig I ever bought with the draw activation (looked like a cig but blue light, itactivated in my pocket and I needed to throw it sharpish).
Yeah agreed nothing should be disposable with a lithium battery. I’ve just the feeling a lot of vapes are just designed to die as fast as possible even when it comes to reusable stuff .
Honestly the entire idea of disposable vapes should be scrapped.
I think I know to which european union you can write a letter to to ban them
They are almost all rechargeable where I live (US) because there’s more juice in them than one charge will handle.
Any disposable I’ve bought that doesnt have a recharge port the battery was dead with at least 20% ejuice remaining.
It should be mandatory that all electronics be recycled by the manufacturer or seller, and the cost of recycled should be reflected on the product price.
On the other hand, I think cigarette butts are also quite polluting the environment too. So I am not sure what’s worse.
Does it matter which is worse when we can take care of both problems?
No one ever talks about stopping cigarettes from being filtered. It’s not as if the filter actually makes cigarettes safe. They just make them easier on your lungs as you smoke and you’re less likely to get bits of tobacco in your mouth. Maybe that shouldn’t be a thing?
Filters could be made biodegradable. Batteries? Probably but not in our lifetime.
Or they could just not be made at all.
They make vape cartridges that are used with a reusable battery. If disposable vapes were banned, they would become the more common option which is definitely better.
Ah ,yes batteries that can explode if heated are way more dangerous than tobaco ash.
First of all, we are not talking here about ash but the cigarette filters, 4.5 trillions of it are littered every year, that contain all the toxins, are made of plastic fibers and it is not bio degradable.
I love that in Fallout one of the crafting materials you get from breaking down cigarettes is asbestos. Its not true of course, at least I don’t think so…
Didn’t know that but also exploding batteries
Its not a competition
Well it appears I took a jet to the finish line proably will need to look into what exactly makes cigarrete waste mor dangerous than the batteries 👍
Volume.
I would design the pack with a thermal fuse of about 60 degrees C stuck between each 3 cells.
This way if one of those crappy cells start overheating the fuse should prevent it from going into thermal runaway.
sounds like a joke
