Rise of single-use vapes sending tonnes of lithium to landfill

https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2022-07-15/rise-of-single-use-vapes-sending-tonnes-of-lithium-to-landfill/

At least we know where the lithum is going and can dig it up again. The use of lithium or cobalt or any other hard to get metal in a single use product should never be tolerated. Digging trash to get to the lithium won't be fun. It can take centuries or all the dangerous organic garbage in a sealed landfill to rot away.

Some say there will never be another civilized species on Earth because humans are playing out all the mines. I think a ten million year old landfill would simply be a new mine. Hopefully by then the garbage would be gone. The main environmental negative of mining would then probably be discharge of microplastics. The mines would produce iron ore (Iron rusts back to a good ore), aluminum at least some of it in its native state, copper and copper oxide free of arsenic, possibly usable premade brass-and every metal ever used in batteries with the possible exception of lead.

Lead-acid battery recycling managed to catch 95% of the lead content of all lead acid batteries made. Lead acid though is a few big batteries (mostly car batteries) that with make the trash can too heavy to lift if thrown in the trash. Not so with a lot of tiny lithium batteries of either the single-shot or rechargeable type.

These being rechargabe lithium cells, the spent vapes might actually be worth dumpstering to re-use the batteries in things like small electrically powered drones, by the parallel pack as phone batteries, etc etc etc. They've only been used ONCE. Do wear a mask and handle with gloves until the batteries have been extracted from the vapes due to covid/flu/RSV/cold hazards of handling stuff that's been in many people's mouths of course!

Notice the 3.7V 350 ma-h cell in this broken down vape: if that's a power cell (max current capacity) and not an energy cell (max storage density), this might be very similar to small drone and model aircraft batteries that sell for about $7 a pop. Do test them under the intended current draw though before loading them into a valuble device!

I shan't belabor your scheme of tilling the dumps in some erstwhile attempt to recover the materials as I a have not the acumen to do so. My contention is simply that of waste. Not to mention the capacity while under great pressure to cause fires not easily extinguishable. Our society has gone quite mad with this throw-away mentality without concern for the consequences for the outcome of further generations. Indeed this mentality completely altered the sensibility of the electronics business by making repairs more costly than simply purchasing another device; theragain exacerbating the landfills issue and contributing endless heavy metals to a noxious mix of substances not consistent with the ordinary breakdown of organic substances. To employ a hackneyed cliche, it is quite the can of worms. Nevertheless it is but a further testament to mankind's short sightedness and general conscientious disregard.

That is soo true!

I speak as one familiar with rebuilt and homemade electronics. I use to do pirate radio and my father was a ham radio operator. I got lots of goodies for the pirate transmitters by stripping parts off old circuit boards. Couldn't get all of it this way, but got a lot of it. Back in Dec 2004, it was big news on CNN that a transmitter in DC broadcasting promos for the 2005 counterinaugural protests with a range of ten miles was "built from $40 worth of Radio Shack and dumpstered parts."

Old stuff was far better than newer of course, as it had more discrete components. Some of the stuff they make now is worthless for parts as its mostly one chip-UNLESS you can get the data sheet for the chip in question.

Even miniaturization is possible in homebuilt stuff, it's just a lot more work and in some cases may take a watchmaker's touch with tiny screws and tiny soldering iron tips etc.