Cheers for the thoughtful response. Producing large amounts of harmful waste seems to be a larger societal issue, not something specific to lithium batteries, but I can see the part about fires being of particular concern. I still find the demonization of vaping in particular to be a bit odd.
Comment on Call for UK ban on single-use vapes as more than 5m discarded each week
Uranium_Green@sh.itjust.works 9 months agoLithium batteries aren’t exactly great if they still hold a charge, they risk violent combustion if damaged/pierced.
The problems really occur when they end up in amongst trash heaps/recycling plants as they can ignite causing huge plastic/rubbish fires that smolder internally for days before suddenly going up.
IIRC there are other metals included in lithium batteries that you don’t want leaking into the ground water (lithium isn’t great, but heavy metals can be pretty awful)
Some places take the vapes, but afaik there is no consistent program, this is compounded by a lot of the people I see using these vapes are children/young teens, which means a lot of them don’t end up in the bin, but literally just thrown on the ground.
b000urns@lemmy.world 9 months ago
9point6@lemmy.world 9 months ago
The other thing is that lithium is a finite, hard to get resource that we have a lot of use for, and typically not used in any other disposable product.
So even aside from the above general issues with disposing lithium, this is particularly wasteful, because people aren’t throwing out their phone battery every other day, for example.
b000urns@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Gotcha. They certainly seem to have become pretty commonplace. Weird thing here is that even though there not meant to be sold here, disposable vapes are certainly the most readily available. If you’re using on with a tank or pods you basically have to order from overseas
DrownedRats@lemmy.world 9 months ago
On top of that, lithium ion batteries aren’t designed as disposable batteries. In devices like vapes, they should be getting upwards of 400 charge cycles before being considered spent. Some get more, some get less, but in “disposable” vapes, they get one. It’s just horrifically wasteful!