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Guy makes “dodgy e-bike” from 130 used vapes to make point about e-waste (arstechnica.com)

submitted 2 weeks ago by gedaliyah@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

101 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Disposable vapes are indefensible. Many, or maybe most, of them contain rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, but manufacturers prefer to sell new ones.

To make a point about how wasteful this practice is—and to also make a pretty rad project and video—Chris Doel took 130 disposable vape batteries (the bigger "3,500 puff" types with model 20400 cells) found littered at a music festival and converted them into a 48-volt, 1,500-watt e-bike battery, one that powered an e-bike with almost no pedaling more than 20 miles. You can see the whole build and watch Doel zoom along trails on his YouTube video.

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[–] A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world 16 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

Yeah tbh I've never really seen anyone successfully quit through vaping. Nicotine pouches or lozenges are much more effective imo.

I'm sure there are plenty of exceptions, but like you said, the vast majority of people vaping are just maintaining.

[–] karl_chungus@lemm.ee 29 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

I did. It took a while because I enjoyed it so much, but it worked better than anything else. It simulated the smoking experience, tasted great and was a fun little device to tinker with. Sure it made me look stupid but in return I got healthier lungs.

Of course I was wrapping my own coils and used a mech mod, the concept of a juul made it so stupidly easy to vape without understanding how it works and just programmed everyone to use cartridges.

And here we are.

When used correctly to wean and taper, vaping can be really helpful as a quit smoking aid.

[–] seaQueue@lemmy.world 13 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

In my experience many of the people who haven't quit are self medicating for attention or depressive reasons. Of the folks I know who vape about half were diagnosed with ADHD later in life (30+) and quit after finding a stimulant medication that worked for them. The rest are unmedicated and self medicating with nicotine and coffee or energy drinks. Self medicating is overlooked in virtually every discussion about nicotine and I'd like to see it considered more often when the topic comes up instead of just leaping straight to "nicotine use bad" or "nicotine users should be punished" like most discussions do.

Edit: there's also some interesting research re: nicotine's neuroprotective properties that gets lost in the prohibition fervor

[–] GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml 16 points 2 weeks ago

Assuming non-wasteful delivery methods, I'd still call that a win as vaping is generally less harmful to the health of the user.

Quitting is of course preferable, but I support harm reduction policies in general

[–] priapus@sh.itjust.works 8 points 2 weeks ago

I know quite a few people that have quit through vaping, and even if they hadn't, vapes are definitely better for their health than cigarettes.

[–] horse_battery_staple@lemmy.world 7 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

I just started vaping more AND smoking because I could vape in my dorm during winter.....

[–] Hominine@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

There's peanut butter in my chocolate!

[–] horse_battery_staple@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

There's CHOCOLATE in my peanut butter!!!

[–] elvith@feddit.org 2 points 2 weeks ago

imagining a giant Reese’s PB cup

There’s chocolate in my peanut butter in my chocolate!

[–] hex@programming.dev 4 points 2 weeks ago

The bonus for vapes is you can wean off nicotine at a super precise rate. You can mix your nicotine juice with more and more non-nicotine juice to achieve greater and greater levels of dilution until the nicotine dose you're taking is so low that it doesn't matter to stop.