• Uranium 🟩@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Lithium 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.

    • DrownedRats@lemmy.world
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      1 year 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!