The UK Throws Away 1 Million Vapes Each Day, Causing ‘Environmental Nightmare’
The UK Throws Away 1 Million Vapes Each Day, Causing ‘Environmental Nightmare’
New research has found that most disposable vapes are being thrown away instead of recycled, causing environmental pollution.
As far as I know despite being a single-use item, these vapes mostly contain rechargable battery cells of type 18650. Even though they are probably rather cheap and low quality cells, they still have around 2300 mAh at 3.6 V current. This gives us 8250 mWh per cell. One million of them would be 8250 kWh, enough for 100-200 electric cars. Every day. In a full year that's 3011250 kWh or around 3 gigawatt hours of storage capacity.
3 gigawatt hours is the capacity of the number 1 biggest battery-based energy storage system in the world: https://www.energy-storage.news/moss-landing-worlds-biggest-battery-storage-project-is-now-3gwh-capacity/
Tossed in the trash. Only from single use vapes. Every year. And only in the UK.
I hope there's no major flaw in my calculation but if it's not, that's really a crazy figure.
The batteries on most of those cheap disposables are essentially done for by the time the juice runs out.
By day 7 a full charge gets maybe 20-30 puffs.
Without these products the market probably wouldn't be as flooded with cheap rechargeable batteries that only last about 10 days.
These batteries are free! You can just take them!
I used to give my empty ones to my niece's bf, he rips them apart and makes shit with them.
I had an ex who collected them, wired them together and now uses the bundle to power an electric bus. It's crazy that it just goes in the trash.
Most single use contain lithium polymer packs, not 18650s, but yes
1000% this. 18650s are used in regular vapes, and they are definitely not cheap to be used in disposables.
Just pass a law that anything intended to be disposable needs to be made with 100% biodegradable material. Selling refillable oil is obviously cleaner and cheaper to make.
This is just profit over planet.
It would need to be naturally biodegradable without leaving any kind of dangerous chemicals. A lot of so called biodegradable plastics can only actually be biodegraded in an industrial compostor.
Sounds like we need things that aren’t disposable
Then they lobby a law to define 100% biodegradable and the lobbyists successfully push for it to mean it will EVENTUALLY bio degrade*
*In 1000 years
Not enough dead billionaires.
As is tradition
Humans are so stupid
I think we’re bad at choosing things that are inconvenient if the risk is abstract, but not necessarily stupid per se
The UK has a population of just over 69 million.
These numbers are legitimately mind-boggling, I’m having a hard time believing it:
Thirteen vapes are discarded every second in the UK, adding up to more than a million each day.
Does the UK have anti-smoking or anti-vaping campaigns, or did they ever? That seems like a lot of people are vaping.
Smoking yes, the UK has the 2nd lowest rate of smoking in the EU (+UK obviously). There hasnt been any significant anti-vaping campaign I'm aware of, because there is a tension that despite it being bad for you its nowhere near as bad as smoking, so getting people off tobacco and onto vapes is a net benefit. Though there does seem to be a growing consensus that vapes have been too permissively regulated thus far and to righten rules around selling them.