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The UK Throws Away 1 Million Vapes Each Day, Causing ‘Environmental Nightmare’
(plantbasednews.org)
Humans are so stupid
this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2024
86 points (97.8% liked)
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Honestly, vapes are so new, disposable ones should never have been legalised.
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 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.
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.
As is tradition
Make it so that brands need to accept electronic devices back for free.
Or unlock them for Linux so we can keep using them after EOL.
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.