[smashed]

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.

[jaggederest]

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.

[teiferer]

"Why stop there" is often a reason why nothing gets done. Why do small if you can go big right away? Because going big right away is costly (in social cost, in convincing, in how much people need to change behavior, ...) and that prevents people from doing it in the first place because the threshold is high. Apathy is the result. Better to take a small step first, then get used to the measure / the cost, then have a next phase where you do more.

Everybody makes fun of paper straws. Or they made fun of wind power when it was barely 0.1% of energy production. Why not immediately demand 20 years ago that all single use plastic is banned? Or that only wind and solar are allowed? Because the step is too big, it would not be accepted. You need to take one step at a time.

That's even a viable strategy against procrastination. There is this big daunting task. So much to do! Oh my, better scroll a little tiktok first. No, just take a small first step of the task. Very small, no big commitment. Then maybe do some tiktok, but the little first step won't be too much. Result is, you have an immediate sense of accomplishment and actually made progress, maybe even stay hooked with more steps of the ultimately big task.

[hammock]

> 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.

[throw101010]

Switzerland has something like this for "eWaste", it's called the ARC [1] (Advance Recycling Contribution). For any electronic device you purchase a small tax is collected and used for the recycling and collection of the future waste it will generate.

The collection mandatorily happens in the shops that sell electronic devices, you don't have to return them to the exact store where it was purchased, as long as they sell similar devices they cannot refuse to take it back (without paying anything more). It works pretty well, even if shop owners/workers aren't always pleasant when you return something.

[1] https://www.erecycling.ch/en/privatpersonen/blog/vRB-Vorgezo...

[pyrolistical]

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.

[Waterluvian]

Trash piles is one way the actual cost of things is obfuscated and punted to future generations.

A lot of people wouldn’t want this because it’s asking for stuff to become more expensive for them.

[lostlogin]

I’m reading ‘The World Without Us’ by Alan’s Weisman. Last thread like this had someone recommend it (thanks!).

Every bit of plastic humans have made still exits, bar a small amount we have burnt.

That’s concerning.

[rvba]

Because it has to start somewhere.

Also many countries collect disposable plastic.

[Ericson2314]

Mechanism design for better trash economics is hard for the same reasons that making a good linearly typed programming language is hard.

I'm not kidding :)

[sneak]

Stopping there makes sense because plastic sitting in a landfill isn’t harmful. Lithium batteries require special hazmat procedures.

[erfgh]

It will raise the costs and the prices, people will be unhappy and this will result in far-right populist parties taking over.

[dyauspitr]

Yes let’s burden any fledging company with the added bureaucracy of having to set up trash collection, disposal and recycling.

[hippo22]

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

[SlightlyLeftPad]

They should just be banned outright. In no world is this going to end up in bins 100% of the time. Disposable really means it’s destined for the trash at best, and just simply litter at worst.

This guy[1] explains the problem quite well.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy-wFixuRVU

[bjackman]

Yeah ban is the answer. Trouble is that, as shown in the article, even if they include the charging and refilling bits they can be cheap enough to throw away after use.

Taxing waste is one part of the story but it's actually a really good thing that vaping is cheaper than smoking so this can only go so far before it's counterproductive.

I think the answers lie in stuff like banning sale of pre-filled ones. If you make people buy a separate bottle of nicotine liquid (and you enforce that this is quite a large minimum size, like we already do with tobacco) and fill the device up before they use it, I think they are much more likely to refill it when it's empty and recharge it when it's dead.

Maybe another thing could be restricting points of sale. I bet a lot of the waste comes from drunk people buying them at 10pm in the corner shop near the pub. If you make people plan ahead that might also help.

[dan-robertson]

I think disposable vapes are banned in the U.K. (where I think the author is?) or at least they will be soon. But the non-disposable options end up being cheap enough that they can be disposed of when empty.

I think a better thing to do may be to try to embed disposal costs into the price of the original product. That changes prices to hopefully incentivise reuse.

[pjmlp]

Most countries don't do enough at all.

For example Germany, while the country is famous for the whole splitting the garbage, I am still waiting after 20 years to see the kitchen oil recycling recipients as we have in Portugal.

As for electronics, I would say no one has anything in place, and human nature is as such that hardly anyone will drive to the next recycling center to deliver a single device that broke down, or call the city hall to collect it.

We should go back to the old days, when electronics were repairable, which naturally companies will lobby against, as that will break down the capitalistic curve of exponential growth in sales.

[bojan]

> As for electronics, I would say no one has anything in place

In Dutch Mediamarkt, the same company as Saturn in Germany I believe, they have bins for electric devices.

[jjice]

Not sure about electronics as a whole, but I was able to recycle (or at least dispose of properly) an inflated old Dell laptop battery at either a Best Buy or a Home Depot (I'd assume it was the former, but they were next to each other so I don't recall). This is in the US.

[rm30]

Maybe Italy is more advanced, you can bring eWaste to the municipal center or to leave to the shop where you are buying a new device. On the street they started to place bin for small eWaste like phones, chargers, keyboards, vape.

[computersuck]

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/

[tiagod]

>As for electronics, I would say no one has anything in place

I Portugal there is Rede Electrão. You can deposit those devices in a lot of supermarkets, stores and fire stations.

[HighGoldstein]

> For example Germany, while the country is famous for the whole splitting the garbage, I am still waiting after 20 years to see the kitchen oil recycling recipients as we have in Portugal.

Because German environmental policy is about virtue signalling to keep the plebs busy, not solving environmental problems. Nuclear power plants replaced by coal and natural gas, obsession with recycling but nothing done about disposable packaging, car regulations and city design dictated for decades by the car manufacturing lobby, combustion engine limits/bans only when said manufacturers thought they could get on the Tesla gravy train and subsequently rolled back when reality became apparent, it just goes on.

[Freedumbs]

Based on your reply you haven't fully considered context. Smokers don't care about themselves or else they wouldn't smoke. As demonstrated by the article, you can see proof that they also don't care for the environment. What makes you think people who intentionally pay to kill themselves and then throw the waste on the ground instead of trash will ever recycle?

[RulerOf]

Smoking is expensive, and people carry these in their pockets, and replace them within hours once they run dry.

If there were a deposit scheme of say five bucks a piece, I'd wager you'd see >80% return rates with every purchase.

[subscribed]

This is so incredibly simplistic it cannot be an argument in a good faith.

Addictions exists. To stop smoking is HARD. Nicotine addition us on par with benzos, prescription opiates or amphetamines.

[robertjpayne]

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 empties and dispose of them responsibly.

[FractalParadigm]

> 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.

Sounds like they should be banning their sale and/or production then, just like many jurisdictions have been with plastics and other non-recyclable items. These devices are not an essential-to-life item where the waste produced is justifiable, especially when you consider the LiPo batteries, which are a borderline-environmental disaster from the moment the lithium is mined to the day that battery finds its way to a landfill. Why single-use disposable vaping devices exist in the first place is somewhat perplexing given permanent/re-fillable ones are also available, often right beside the disposable ones, and generally offer a significantly lower cost of ownership.

[diffeomorphism]

Because they are a fire hazard:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62vk0p5dn5o

Trash compactors break the batteries in these things. A deposit could help to ensure that the vapes are disposed responsibly.

Other option: Add an "electronics" bin everywhere. Though that would be more expensive and less clear how effective it would be.

[throwmeoutplzdo]

How and why are the environmental effects not a factor for you?

[gnopgnip]

I see more vape litter on the beach than bottles and cans. The deposit is part of why that is

[computersuck]

It's very profitable to recycle small electronics in some economies where thousands of companies do it (eg India or Shenzhen); in countries where human labour is more expensive, it's untenable

[seemaze]

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

[lagniappe]

What if it worked like the carts at Aldi? Put something reasonable like 3-5 bucks on the sale amount, and redeem the same amount when returned.

[margalabargala]

Yes, that is also how the deposit on a can of soda works.

[calvinmorrison]

i pay 25c to leave my cart in the lot

[csomar]

I don't want to advertise for the brand but I bought a disposable "looking" vape today where they split the liquid from the core. So the end result is a very small stick but is actually re-usable and they had a re-cycling digital bin.

[tjohns]

The problem is you can’t find any company willing to recycle them. Because of the nicotine content, I’ve heard e-waste recyclers consider them hazardous waste and refuse to touch them.

[Domenic_S]

yeah, e-waste recyclers suck, they love to ship it all to the 3rd world where piles of circuit boards get tossed in an open fire and stirred by kids to reclaim the metals.

Here's a slightly old investigation finding 40% of ewaste being shipped off to china: https://www.ban.org/news-new/2016/9/15/secret-tracking-proje...

[mamonoleechi]

vape products does not all contain nicotine, it's an ingredient you choose to add in your blend,

you can choose to either vape a flavour version only, or one containing a certain amount of nicotine

[hennell]

I feel like the take it back approach, just ends with the retailer/manufacturer throwing it away anyway.

Looking at this device it feels like it shouldn't be hard to have a reusable base with battery and electronics, and a disposable capsule that attaches on top but is replaceable.

[xmprt]

Who bears the cost of that improvement? Either the manufacturer, the retailer, or the customer. The problem is that the waste created by vapes is a negative externality so there's no incentive to improve their design. Until the government starts requiring safe disposal of these things, we won't see a change. Think about what people used to do with old car oil before new environment protection regulations.

[fennecfoxy]

You think China is gonna take all of em back?

[subscribed]

Why should that be China's problem?

Someone imported it, someone's selling it in the stores.

If the price of the "disposable" is, say, £5, make the deposit £50. Suddenly all the vapes will end up back at the retailer.

And make sure retailer has the financial incentive to return the used disposables and that's it.

I'm confident the lawmakers have been bribed to refuse to tackle the problem, otherwise how you can explain minimum price on plastic bags but tolerating toxic landfill fires and staggering waste of lithium (recycling will inevitably br fixed soon).

[flexagoon]

I've seen some universities in my country have deposit boxes specifically for single-use vapes

[comonoid]

God bless these horrible devices are not disposed in billions every day as bottles are!

[eru]

> Many countries have deposits for single use bottles/cans [...]

Yeah, the deposits for cans are a bit stupid: people already widely recycle aluminum (and scrap metals in general) purely for commercial reasons. No need for extra regulation there like mandatory deposits.

[lm28469]

It's much easier to recycle things when everyone participate and bring their trash to a common place.

I've lived in places with no deposits and there is much much much more littering compared to places having deposits on every types of metal/plastic beverage containers