Customer sparks outrage after disassembling commonly discarded product: 'Should be banned'

A social media post has gone viral for showing a literal breakdown of a disposable vape, showing the components that go into the commonly littered product.

The photo, posted on Reddit's r/mildlyinteresting subreddit, shows a disassembled vape product. It garnered thousands of reactions, many of them from commenters who were outraged that the product even exists.

"This super popular disposable vape device is basically just a tampon soaked in nicotine juice that gets zapped by a small battery to produce vapor," the original poster wrote.

Sure enough, the photo shows what appears to be a small, rolled-up piece of cotton, a battery, and several pieces of plastic.

These products are marketed as disposable because they're not refillable. But that term may be a bit misleading, as they are actually full of non-biodegradable materials that cause massive amounts of waste.

"The new e-waste landfill disaster," one commenter wrote. "Batteries straight to landfill."

Data from the Public Interest Research Group shows that nearly 500,000 e-cigarettes were thrown out every day in 2023, sending 30 tons of lithium to landfills each year, or the amount needed to make more than 3,300 electric vehicle batteries.

Vape products also contribute to the roughly 22 million tons of plastic that gets littered each year, as estimated by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. 

Reddit is full of threads with people complaining about e-cigarettes polluting their parks and neighborhoods.

And this plastic often breaks up into microplastics, tiny particles that end up in our oceans, drinking water, and brains.

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In a promising sign for e-waste and future generations' health, e-cigarette use has dropped among American youth. In 2024, 1.63 million young people used e-cigarettes, according to the Food and Drug Administration, down from 2.13 million in 2023.

But given the waste these devices create, and the health problems to which they contribute, many commenters on this Reddit thread still feel strong regulation is needed to curb e-cigarette use.

"Disposable vapes are absolute trash and should be banned everywhere," one commenter wrote.

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