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.
Humans are so stupid
Honestly, vapes are so new, disposable ones should never have been legalised.
These vapes been around for 20+ years, they have just become trendier now, maybe because they got smaller
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.
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.
Already the case in Germany, yet everyone still just throws them away out of convenience
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