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There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

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Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

#61

Post by robertjpayne »

denkmoon wrote: post #22
SchemaLoad wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are straight up banned in Australia but you often see them chucked in the gutters and rivers. Only seems like they started raiding the stores in the last few months.

The vape ban in Australia is utterly stupid though. All vapes are banned, not just disposables, and guess what's easier to discretely sell to kids from a newsagency. Doesn't seem to have stopped kids getting their vapes yet I need to import my cannabis vape via the black market.

They're not all banned, you just need a prescription to get one which realistically should've been implemented day 0.

Eventually it'll prove very impactful with the youth, it'll reduce the number of users and make it more cost prohibitive to be so prolific as it is right now.

Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

#62

Post by seemaze »

robertjpayne wrote: post #56
smashed wrote: post #3

Many countries have deposits for single use bottles/cans but an electronic device with a lipo battery is seen as perfectly fine to throw away. These things should have 100 times the deposit amount of a can of soda with mandatory requirements for retailers to take the 'empties' back.

Why though? Bottles/cans are easily recycled and I believe the small reimbursement is easily recovered during the recycling costs. It's not profitable to recycle small electronic devices otherwise you'd see heaps of shops doing it. It's toxic, hazardous and labour intensive. 100 times the deposit amount would be like $5-10 USD per-device which is insane. I do agree that any retailers should be required to take back e…

I just received a $10 deposit refund for returning my motorcycle battery to the battery shop.

Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

#63

Post by throwmeoutplzdo »

hippo22 wrote: post #51
jaggederest wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why stop there? I think more or less every non-durable product manufacturer (say, lifespan less than 5 years) should be required to take the product back at end of life and dispose of it properly. Trash is an enormous externality. I'm talking about plastic clamshells, container lids, "disposable" storage containers, the lot.

Why is trash an "enormous externality"? Even if the retailer took it back it would still be... trash.

It should be at a minimum stored safely. How and why are the environmental effects not a factor for you?

Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

#64

Post by jonah-archive »

userbinator wrote: post #54
jonah-archive wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a second regards the microwave, depending on the age, please be extremely careful about the magnetron the insulators on which could contain beryllium oxide, which can kill you. There are a lot of fun parts inside microwaves (a personal favorite is the high-torque-low-speed-line-voltage motor, which I use to make creepy Halloween decorations) but the caps, transformer, and magnetron are all useful for somewhat... m…

the insulators on which could contain beryllium oxide As far as I can tell, this is an urban legend. No consumer microwave oven has ever used beryllium in its magnetron insulators. Military radar ones, yes (and likely where the legend started.) Some specialist test equipment and RF transmitters too, and they all contain prominent warnings of it. Besides its toxicity, it's far more expensive than regular alumina.

That's my understanding as well, but I still wouldn't disassemble a 1960s microwave without protection (I have assisted in the dismantling of a couple microwave communications devices which did contain BeO and were also very well-labeled as such). Anything from the 80s on at least is almost certainly aluminum.

Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

#65

Post by schrodinger »

hippo22 wrote: post #51
jaggederest wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why stop there? I think more or less every non-durable product manufacturer (say, lifespan less than 5 years) should be required to take the product back at end of life and dispose of it properly. Trash is an enormous externality. I'm talking about plastic clamshells, container lids, "disposable" storage containers, the lot.

Why is trash an "enormous externality"? Even if the retailer took it back it would still be... trash.

It's an externality because the entity that sold it to you doesn't have to pay the consequences of dealing with the trash. OP said "dispose of it properly," which could mean a lot of things, all of which are better than leaving it on a beach.

Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

#66

Post by small_scombrus »

hippo22 wrote: post #51
jaggederest wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why stop there? I think more or less every non-durable product manufacturer (say, lifespan less than 5 years) should be required to take the product back at end of life and dispose of it properly. Trash is an enormous externality. I'm talking about plastic clamshells, container lids, "disposable" storage containers, the lot.

Why is trash an "enormous externality"? Even if the retailer took it back it would still be... trash.

> Even if the retailer took it back it would still be... trash.

Yes, but making them deal with it would create a massive incentive to either reduce the amount of rubbish they make, or to make it recyclable/processable.

Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

#67

Post by irishcoffee »

pyrolistical wrote: post #43
jaggederest wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why stop there? I think more or less every non-durable product manufacturer (say, lifespan less than 5 years) should be required to take the product back at end of life and dispose of it properly. Trash is an enormous externality. I'm talking about plastic clamshells, container lids, "disposable" storage containers, the lot.

Go further. Every product must be returned to manufacturer at end of life. Any items found by garbage program will be collected and returned to manufacturer at cost. All items sold in country must be identifiable for this purpose. Importers are considered the manufacturers and must retrofit products. Then we would be getting closer to capturing the total burden to society.

The amount of completely useless plastic garbage that we would be sending back east would be mind-numbing. They don’t have anywhere to put that trash either.

Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

#68

Post by hammock »

jaggederest wrote: post #5
smashed wrote: post #3

Many countries have deposits for single use bottles/cans but an electronic device with a lipo battery is seen as perfectly fine to throw away. These things should have 100 times the deposit amount of a can of soda with mandatory requirements for retailers to take the 'empties' back.

Why stop there? I think more or less every non-durable product manufacturer (say, lifespan less than 5 years) should be required to take the product back at end of life and dispose of it properly. Trash is an enormous externality. I'm talking about plastic clamshells, container lids, "disposable" storage containers, the lot.

> more or less every non-durable product manufacturer (say, lifespan less than 5 years) should be required to take the product back at end of life and dispose of it properly

Yeah, we had that. Glass milk bottles and coke bottles and bulk goods sold out of barrels by the lb rather than in plastic bags.

But then plastic took off and soon after Big Sugar paid a PR/lobbying firm to run a campaign with a fake Indian crying a single tear and calling every Tom Dick and Harry a “litterbug” and now the pile of garbage is our fault, not the manufacturers.

Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

#69

Post by lend000 »

pyrolistical wrote: post #43
jaggederest wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why stop there? I think more or less every non-durable product manufacturer (say, lifespan less than 5 years) should be required to take the product back at end of life and dispose of it properly. Trash is an enormous externality. I'm talking about plastic clamshells, container lids, "disposable" storage containers, the lot.

Go further. Every product must be returned to manufacturer at end of life. Any items found by garbage program will be collected and returned to manufacturer at cost. All items sold in country must be identifiable for this purpose. Importers are considered the manufacturers and must retrofit products. Then we would be getting closer to capturing the total burden to society.

I don't hate the idea.

But if you think it through, it's intractable. You need to 2x+ the transportation cost of all products (it will cost more to get them back for multiple reasons, including products not being as neatly packaged and often going from many-to-one transportation to many-to-many). Companies also need to double their specializations and adopt recycling processes that will largely be redundant with other companies; you basically make it impossible for small companies to make complicated products. And are we including food products, the majority of trash? It makes a lot more sense to centralize waste repurposing and benefit from economies of scale.

Waste management is already a very profitable industry. Of course, it's wasteful, just burying stuff, and environmentally harmful. But I'm of the opinion that it will soon be economically viable to start mining landfills for different types of enriched materials, and government subsidies could bridge the gap for things that are of greater public interest to recycle.

I've been working on the software side of the technology needed to do this in my spare time for a couple years, waiting for some hardware advancements.

Re: There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

#70

Post by tthoou34233423 »

Quinner wrote: post #16
DiabloD3 wrote: post #2

We really need to ban these things.

The reason disposables are so popular in the US is the FDA banned any flavored cartridges, which doesn't include disposables. The immense battery waste is a direct result of a relatively new law.

I seriously wonder how it's even feasible for these things to be profitable.
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