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Start by banning disposable vapes. The sheer waste of lithium from those fucking devices is insane in 2026. We need every scrap of it we can get!

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Its market value is clearly not high enough or they wouldn't use it in disposable vapes.

I think the problem is more that non disposable vapes are illegal and unavailable to most people.

95% come from China? Why ban importing the materials you desire, which are not going to magically be cheaper by banning them, instead of providing services to simply and easily recycle them?

Collection and recycling these safely at scale seems mind boggling difficult. Various batteries, electronics, resin encrusted elements, oils, plastics, and mouthy guckiness.

I would love to see how this process works. Banning them seems to be the most economic and safest solution.

You’re correct, it isn’t worthwhile in either case, imo. However, I’m more curious as to what the “solution” is so supposed to achieve.

If you took the lithium from every disposable vape imported into the US yearly and instead used the lithium for industrial scale batteries, you’d get like 100. That’s it. Or maybe 5k batteries for EVs. That’s about 0.005% of yearly EV sales.

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