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Lithium-ion battery waste fires are increasing, and vapes are a big part of it (arstechnica.com)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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2024 was "a year of growth," according to fire-suppression company Fire Rover, but that's not an entirely good thing.

The company, which offers fire detection and suppression systems based on thermal and optical imaging, smoke analytics, and human verification, releases annual reports on waste and recycling facility fires in the US and Canada to select industry and media. In 2024, Fire Rover, based on its fire identifications, saw 2,910 incidents, a 60 percent increase from the 1,809 in 2023, and more than double the 1,409 fires confirmed in 2022.

Publicly reported fire incidents at waste and recycling facilities also hit 398, a new high since Fire Rover began compiling its report eight years ago, when that number was closer to 275.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

The UK is about to ban disposable vapes, but I fear it may achieve little.

What the legislation does is to define what "reusable" means, and demand that vapes must meet that.

In reality, I suspect that manufacturers will simply adjust their strategies to produce vapes that are "technically" reusable and rechargeable and meet the law in a bare-minimum way, but really are intended to be used exactly once, just like disposable ones were, and that's exactly how they will continue to be treated by consumers.

Cost will probably go up 20% to cover it, but that's all, and in the end even more material will be going in landfill.

In my opinion, what the legislation should have done is to set an absolute minimum price on the cost of a vape pen. That would be very heavy-handed, but it would actually create the strong financial motivation required to force consumers to genuinely treat the vape pen as something they will re-use.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 17 hours ago

This is what happened with plastic bags in some stores in the US. We passed plastic bag bans and while in a lot of cases the result was a combination of low-quality paper bags and legitimately reusable plastic totes, in the past couple of years some places have started giving out plastic bags that are way thicker than the ones we used to have and just calling them reusable. Like, yeah, they're strong enough to be reused, but that definitely doesn't seem to be the norm. We just ended up with single-use plastic bags that literally use more plastic.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago

At least it can't be as bad as what we've got in Australia.

A ham fisted law passed through to ban 'all vapes' except for a select few that are manufactured by philip morris and the other big tobacco companies.

The tax on cigarettes alongside this has made an extremely lucrative black market for organised crime.