This shit really grinds my gears. There's absolutely no need for this product. Normal vape is like $20, you're not saving on anything. In EU the manufacturers are obligated to recover used units (they have to setup boxes where you can drop them and handle recycling) but obviously you see them on the ground all the time. This should be banned with the speed of light but EC thinks the current regulations are enough. Fucking infuriating.
this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2023
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I was in Italy recently, and I could ONLY buy single use. I fucking hated it as it died in two days making me throw out an otherwise fine device - just because there's no charging port.
Now I have one lasting for almost half a year, and that's only the taste that dissappears - not the battery becoming bad.
I believe the regulations about replaceable batteries will apply here but they are only coming to life in 2025 or even later.
Aah okay! It's good to know.
Where I live, only single use vapes are legal.
Tobacco companies must love anti-ecig regulations like that lol.
Disposable e-cigarettes were a direct and immediate response to pod based vapes getting banned. Use to be, you would buy a device and just buy juice pods that were disposable. It still wasn't great for waste, but that policy was a clear step in the wrong direction.
They saved children from using Juuls, just to fill the landfills with lithium batteries.
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There's absolutely no need for this product. Normal vape is like $20
A single use disposable is like $4 - $10, depending on how many puffs, and some people just want something they can puff on for the weekend and then quit, not something they can use/reuse long term.
Sure it's not healthy, and it's environmentally irresponsible with current single use disposables, but there's definitely a market of "casual smokers" that don't want to commit to a non-disposable vape.
When it's easier for people to litter, they litter more. I don't care if they want to vape while pretending they're only gonna do it for one weekend.
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Really? People smoke for one weekend and then quit? Never ever heard about this. Sure, there are people that smoke sporadically, for example only while partying or something but this is such a minority I doubt anyone would target a product specifically at them. Besides, you can just buy normal vape and buy refills only for one weekend and then 'quit'. $20 non-disposable vape is no commitment, that's my point. And people who can't afford to spend $20 on a vape probably shouldn't be spending their money on smoking anyway. There's tons of policies to discourage people from smoking, banning cheap, single use vapes should be one of them.
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A few of us electronics hobbyists have been collecting them (when found discarded on the street) to harvest the battery for re-use in other projects.
.
Yes they're nasty, but I pick them up with a dog poo bag and clean them before cracking them open to get the battery.
I was just thinking about this the other day. Any ideas for projects to use them with?
Turn them into a power bank, among other things.
futuristic caltrops
I am dying... 🤣
Also they all have to be 0.1 v from each other otherwise the "whole thing goes south" sounds scary and is now kind of making me rethink my plan of putting up collection boxes outside of high schools and building a battery for my house out of them.
Once it's balanced and wired it's impossible to be imbalanced again though. The risk is only during initial assembly and you accidentally includes an empty cells among fully charged cells.
building a battery for my house
Uh yeah that's totally different league than building a power bank though.
this is only true if they're 1s. but all bets are off if you have cell groups. God forbid you use them to make anything remotely useful like an ebike battery or home power storage.
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I guess that's the silver lining, free batteries for anyone willing to deal with a dirty object.
They're also a prime starting supply for lithium battery recycling plants so they can get things figured out before they have to deal with car packs at volume.
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That reminds me of this monstrosity https://www.walmart.com/ip/Neutrogena-Light-Therapy-Acne-Treatment-Face-Mask-1-ct/168984043
You have to buy new "activators" every 30 uses as a way of increasing profits... You know rather than just letting users replace the batteries.
This seems easy to hack. Just dig into it and hook it up to a wall wort with the applicable resistor, then sell the monstrosity on eBay for 2x the cost.
I can imagine the company suing
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Reminded me of this: https://www.trojanbrands.com/en/products/sex-toys-vibrators/trojan-tandem-couples-vibrating-ring And Louis Rossmann's repair video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv88A4vI960
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I used to have a radio that would use the leftover battery from a Polaroid 600 cassette.
Iirc that was some sort of a lipo and it handled the flash and motors, but had more than enough power after the paltry 10 pictures were taken to power an AM/FM radio.
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Oh wow it's as of e-cigs is just like cigarettes, but besides cancer and toxic chemicals, they also found a way to add more waste.
I gave up arguing with people like you a long time ago, but I still want you to know actively telling people they're just as bad as cigarettes will keep people on cigarettes, which are 4000x worse than vaping. Your misguided views are extremely harmful.
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I used to have roommates who vaped from that exact type of single-use device shown in the thumbnail diagram. They asked me to re-charge it, which I did, disassemble it, connect it to my Li-ion charger and it worked again. Apparently it didn't taste good because it was nearly out of juice, but that was when I found out these were perfectly reusable 3.7V batteries in a disposable product.
Isn't there a difference between rechargable and single-use-batteries? I was always under the Impression you should under no circumstances try to recharge single use batteries or they would explode?
These are rechargeable lithium ion batteries. The same standard 18650 that has powered laptops, EVs, and power banks.
They're packaged inside a single use product, but the battery is rechargeable.
Many products actually have charging ports now. All they need to do is allow users to change out the flavor wick and we will come full circle.
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Not an 18650, that’s way too big (18x65mm). Smaller than 14500 (AA) for sure
You'd need quite a number of alkaline batteries to get the necessary watts to drive a vape. Lithium cells aren't just rechargable they are also good at releasing lots of energy in a short amount of time.
There is a difference. Not sure how they ar made, but the chemical composition and possibly the design is different.
Trying to recharge a non rechargeable battery can risky and there is the possibility of leaking or explosion.
In general yes, but that doesn't apply here. Vapes all use rechargeable lithium batteries, even the disposables without a charging port. Other battery chemistries at that size don't put out enough power.
Meanwhile, I’m forced to use shitty paper straws because plastic straws are banned. And yet THIS SHIT is somehow legal??
Myself I buy these disposables from time to time, but always return to small electronics recycle boxes. It's still electronic after all, with a fucking lithium battery in it.
If you ask me - these should be banned. Only refillables should be allowed to exist.
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Popularity among 18 year olds of > 50%. Christ. A significant chunk of those will become long term users.
Part of why the single use vapes are popular seems to me to be due to kids using them, they can toss it out so they won't get in trouble for having it, or if they do get it taken away it's just the one disposable instead of a reusable device. They also smell and taste like candy.
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I keep telling you all smokers are jokers
Yeah, its the consumer's fault! /s
Every aspect of vaping is wasteful and stupid.
There are plenty of people out there using equipment with replaceable and rechargable batteries and owned tanks that they refill with their own liquid
Pretty much the least wasteful version of smoking as far as I can tell
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Is this what post-scarcity is going to be like?
When we get desperate enough for scarce resources we’ll start digging in our trash heaps. I’m surprised we haven’t started yet.
Google “landfill mining”. It’s being researched. So far the economics of what could be recovered don’t outweigh the costs, but they might eventually. Current mining mostly concentrates on remediating older unlined fills and moving the waste to a lined fill.
https://gizmodo.com/landfill-mining-metal-recovery-trash-recycling-ewaste-1850151569
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