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
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.
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.
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!!!
Disposable vapes will be banned in the UK starting in June 2025.
Based.
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.
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 bought one from Aventon. It was easy to repair and didn’t require anything special.
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.
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.
So? As long as they deliver the ebike, what do you care about the financial health of the company after that?
Support. Warranties. Replacement parts.
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
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.
