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The UK Throws Away 1 Million Vapes Each Day, Causing ‘Environmental Nightmare’ (plantbasednews.org)
submitted 1 week ago by Sunshine@lemmy.ca to c/climate@slrpnk.net
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[-] rbn@sopuli.xyz 41 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

As far as I know despite being a single-use item, these vapes mostly contain rechargable battery cells of type 18650. Even though they are probably rather cheap and low quality cells, they still have around 2300 mAh at 3.6 V current. This gives us 8250 mWh per cell. One million of them would be 8250 kWh, enough for 100-200 electric cars. Every day. In a full year that's 3011250 kWh or around 3 gigawatt hours of storage capacity.

3 gigawatt hours is the capacity of the number 1 biggest battery-based energy storage system in the world: https://www.energy-storage.news/moss-landing-worlds-biggest-battery-storage-project-is-now-3gwh-capacity/

Tossed in the trash. Only from single use vapes. Every year. And only in the UK.

I hope there's no major flaw in my calculation but if it's not, that's really a crazy figure.

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this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2024
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