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Comment by greatartiste | Hacker News Reader

These things are now everywhere , not just litter but an environmental horror story and a fire risk as well. Previously I had seen them & wondered what they were then this Big Clive video explained all ..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N65DpT2nqEI&ab_channel=bigcl...

I must admit the ones with 1500 mah batteries are very useful.

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It's been infuriating watching this in real time in the UK. Over the past 6 months, shops that sold liquids overnight just stopped selling anything reusable, with shelves full of this single use shit

Of course these sell better with higher margins than the old liquid bottles. Hope they get taxed into oblivion, wayyy worse for society than an equivalent box of cigarettes

My God, that video made me wince when he revealed the insides of all those devices. Perfectly good lithium and manufacturing, made to be used once and literally thrown away. Such a disgusting level of waste.

How is that cost effective? To me, it seems like something is wrong with our economy if it's cost effective to waste so many resources. I'm sure the cost to an individual to extract and refine those resources are low-- but the cost to society as a whole of littering those resources is great

In many countries, tobacco is very highly taxed (over 10£ for a pack in the UK). Some recent legislation made reusable vaporiser products hard to purchase and sell, limiting tank sizes, nicotine contents, etc, which opened the market for these.

Due to the highly taxed nature of nicotine products, the battery/circuitry cost is negligible if it helps getting around restrictions.

Margins on these are almost certainly insane, and they appeal to young folk. Don't even need to do the math to know why even large retailers like Tesco are replacing their stocks with them

Perhaps it's an unintended consequence of sin taxes on tobacco? If traditional cigarettes were sold at 100-300% of manufacturing cost, single-use electronics couldn't compete.

Cigarettes are heavily taxed and very expensive, so these disposable e-cig is already profitable when sold at 50% cigarettes price.

you have a strong of faith in capitalism if you expect a market solution to these kind of ills, or if you think it's a few incremental reforms away from being back on-track as "correct" capitalism

Lithium batteries are too widely used in my opinion.

I have the IKEA Eneby Bluetooth speaker. Uses 3 AAA. I can just reuse what rechargeable batteries I have. And I can use the speaker as long as I have batteries so I can charge up as many AAAs as I have. The speaker is no larger than most speakers. You can also recharge the batteries inside the speaker if you want.

So many things would be just fine with normal AA or AAA batteries.

There are lithiums in a similar size as AA and company, and are standards that hold more power. Like the 18650 or the 21700. They're perfectly viable as batteries honestly, and they've caused a revolution in stuff like flashlights.

I'm trying not to poo-poo lithiums since they honestly are super good. I'm just upset about this immense level of waste.

I've even seen them ending up in the ocean and harbors. Teens will litter them on the shoreline and not realize (or care) that the high tide will take them.

Still waiting to find one of those - so far I've only found the 500mAh versions.

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