Littered disposable vapes are hard to miss. They're generally brightly colored, and they stand out against the darker pavement of roads and sidewalks. And they've been showing up in droves.
One frustrated bystander posted a photo of a tiny section of curb with seven discarded vapes visible in the subreddit r/AntiConsumption. "I wouldn't care if people vaped if they weren't generating so much plastic waste," they wrote angrily. "This should be outlawed. If you want to destroy your own health, go ahead, but don't add more plastic waste to our planet."
Commenters agreed. "It's insanely wasteful," one person said.
"The plastic is pretty bad, but is not even the worst in terms of environmental impact," another person explained. "Lithium batteries are highly flammable, causing fires on landfills and are leaking battery acid, lithium and nicotine salts into the environment."
"Not to mention the environmental cost of extracting the raw materials," another person pointed out.
According to GreenMatch, for every ton of lithium mined, 15 tons of toxic, planet-warming harmful carbon pollution enter Earth's atmosphere. The extraction is also incredibly energy-consumptive, using hundreds of thousands of gallons of water in areas that are typically already arid.
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And once on the ground — or often, in parks, forests, and even oceans, where they're carelessly tossed — these disposable vapes contaminate their environment, leaching thousands of harmful chemicals into soil and waterways, per Johns Hopkins University.
"Wait till you park your tire on one at a red light," one commenter chimed in. "They burn pretty hot when crushed, your tire will be flat in about a minute."
But despite the many harms, people don't want to stop buying vapes. There are currently over 82 million vapers worldwide; in the U.S., the majority of them are using disposable vapes, per the journal Drugs, Habits, and Social Policy and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Commenters were disgusted by both the blatant waste and the reckless production of the vapes. "I was at a friends house and this guy was literally playing Tetris on his vape. It's not even one that you can fill again, so once it's empty you just throw it away," one person said. "Why does something like that even exist?"
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