this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2023
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[–] ExLisper@linux.community 140 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

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.

[–] themurphy@lemmy.world 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] ExLisper@linux.community 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I believe the regulations about replaceable batteries will apply here but they are only coming to life in 2025 or even later.

[–] themurphy@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Aah okay! It's good to know.

[–] Virulent@reddthat.com 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Where I live, only single use vapes are legal.

[–] Rediphile@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 year ago

Tobacco companies must love anti-ecig regulations like that lol.

[–] SpruceBringsteen@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

People are lazy and don't want to maintain a vape, which does require some basic maintenance/cleaning.

[–] ExLisper@linux.community 19 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Never heard about it. My GF vapes and the vape is simply a battery with a charger. The liquid container is exchangeable. You refill it and when it runs out you change it. There's no maintenance. And even if it were true what do I care? We're supposed to contaminate the environment with batteries because some people are inconvenienced by their addiction? As I said, this product is not needed and should be banned.

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[–] sleepy555@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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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[–] Nima@lemmy.world 90 points 1 year ago (1 children)

of course they are. it's why I always encourage people not to buy them. they're awful for the environment, they're wasteful and they are lower quality than you'd get with most standard rechargeable e-cigarette kits.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 42 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I don't vape, but I can't imagine they're cheaper than re-usable vaping devices in the long run either.

[–] Nima@lemmy.world 43 points 1 year ago

oh my goodness yes. I couldn't imagine buying a disposable every time I ran out.

that would possibly be just as expensive as smoking regular cigarettes.

I just use a little pod system that has replaceable coil heads. it was maybe 60 total because I bought two batteries. but I've not needed a replacement battery for my personal vape yet. Just have been replacing (or reusing) my coil heads.

[–] Feidry@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I do vape. The long-term reusable vapes are a LOT more expensive than the disposable ones. My current setup cost 100 USD before batteries or coils.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago (7 children)

No, I mean long-term as in costs. Over a year or two, won't you be saving money?

[–] Froyn@kbin.social 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

$9 for the device - Vuse is the brand
Approx $7 per "cartridge"

$14 (on average) for a "Breeze Pro" disposable vape.

So it's cheaper, but about the same as regular cigarettes. Even worse, quality control on the cartridges is shoddy at best and I wind up moving the coil from a decent cartridge to one that failed less than 1/4 way through. At this point it's rare to have a coil last as long as it should.

Best way to save money is to quit. Dropped alcohol last year and THC before Thanksgiving.
Nicotine is next on the list, here's hoping for a cheaper new year.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nicotine is one of the hardest addictions to get over. Nicotine is as addictive as heroin or cocaine. I wish you good luck, but don't blame yourself if you can't quit.

I quit in 2000 and I think the only way I was able to quit was because I worked in a place where everyone smoked, so I got a ton of second-hand smoke. I doubt I would have been able to do it otherwise and it was still one of the harder things I'd have to do.

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[–] Feidry@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, in the long term you are saving money but if you have 20 bucks but not 100, what vape are you buying? That's the point I'm making.

[–] Nougat@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Honestly, even for twenty bucks, you can probably get a cheap rechargeable vape kit.

[–] GiveMemes@jlai.lu 5 points 1 year ago

You can definitely get a shitty one that will have you back on the disposables within a few weeks until you save enough for a good system. Source: been there done that lol

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[–] kent_eh@lemmy.ca 62 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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.

[–] daed@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I was just thinking about this the other day. Any ideas for projects to use them with?

[–] redcalcium@lemmy.institute 13 points 1 year ago

Turn them into a power bank, among other things.

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[–] Usernameblankface@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

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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[–] Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world 47 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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.

[–] Neil@lemmy.ml 21 points 1 year ago

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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[–] Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 46 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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.

[–] KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] sarmale@lemmy.zip 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I can imagine the company suing

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[–] jasondj@ttrpg.network 5 points 1 year ago

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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[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 36 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] blocker1980@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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?

[–] Usernameblankface@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 19 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] Tibert@jlai.lu 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] CalicoJack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] FinishingDutch@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Meanwhile, I’m forced to use shitty paper straws because plastic straws are banned. And yet THIS SHIT is somehow legal??

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[–] therealjcdenton@lemmy.zip 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I keep telling you all smokers are jokers

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[–] the_q@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Every aspect of vaping is wasteful and stupid.

[–] gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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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[–] treadful@lemmy.zip 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is this what post-scarcity is going to be like?

[–] Brkdncr@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

When we get desperate enough for scarce resources we’ll start digging in our trash heaps. I’m surprised we haven’t started yet.

[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Well yeah. As far as I know, there's no such thing as a single-cycle battery for a low-power application.

[–] qupada@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They're not really particularly low power.

Quick search suggests around 8W power consumption with a 2 ohm heater, which at the approximately 4V of a charged Lithium-Ion battery (V=IR, P=VI) checks out to around a 2A draw.

Similar results suggest the batteries inside are in the neighbourhood of 0.75Ah (3.7V nominal) = 2.8Wh. I don't know how much of that capacity actually gets used during the "lifespan" of the vape, but I'd guess half would be a good estimate. In any case, probably safe to assume you need to pack around 2Wh in at minimum.

A Lithium AA battery (Li-FeS2 chemistry) gives you 3.4Ah @ 1.5V = 5.1Wh, but has a maximum discharge current of 2.5A (only 3.8W). The AAA is only 1.2Ah with 1.5A discharge, but two of them would give you 3.6Wh and 4.5W, closer to the target but still under.

You could probably arrange this in some sort of configuration whereby the batteries charge a capacitor and that runs the heater, at those kind of numbers it'd need to be at most a 2 seconds off for 1 second on deal, but that honestly seems like it should be fine for, y'know, vaping. Might just need to have an on/off switch to avoid draining the batteries when you're not using it.

But I guess we're at the point where manufacturing Li-Po cells happens in such vast quantities that the extra electronics to charge a capacitor from a 1.5V battery probably cost more.

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