Talk:Environmental impact of electronic cigarettes: Difference between revisions

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 17 January 2024 and 24 April 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Climatewarrior88, ASCM20, Redpoppys (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Climatecrisis02, Westin.boyd, Dcp513420.

— Assignment last updated by Climatewarrior88 (talk) 15:51, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I can tell ecigs use less than one-thousandth of global lithium production so cannot be blamed for any ill-effects of lithium mining or any future shortage or price changes. Chidgk1 (talk) 16:50, 23 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I deleted it Chidgk1 (talk) 08:52, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t think the dab to disposable is really necessary. Not having that is very common in SCHOLARSHIP, which means that they either cover the two together (in which case we should probably do the same) or disposables would be the PRIMARYTOPIC of the undabed title regardless. Thus going to move it back in a few days. Alpha3031 (t • c) 13:33, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Alpha3031 I don’t vape or smoke and I don’t understand why the USA apparently classes nicotine as a hazardous waste. The article doesn’t properly explain why ecigs in UK (or any other country where disposables are not used) would have any significant environmental impact. For example why can’t a container which contained nicotine just be disposed of like any other container? Chidgk1 (talk) 06:21, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t smoke either, but there’s a fairly recent review from INTREPID Lab [1] that cites two papers that mention nicotine. The MDPI Sustainability paper cited mentions:

Littering of e-liquid containers from e-cigarettes poses a particularly serious threat of environmental pollution because they can contain high concentrations of residual nicotine

So I guess people don’t use up all the liquid or something? (the cheapskate in me wonders why they would do that) The J. Environ. Manag. paper says pretty much the same thing:

Improper disposal of e-cigarette cartridges, batteries, and related materials could result in nicotine exposure to children, adults, and animals, to soil and water contamination (Public Health Law Center. Regulating Electronic Cigarettes & Similar Devices, Mitchell Hamline School of Law, 2017). Collected e-cigarettes should not be crashed when collected, in order to reclaim batteries because there is a danger of nicotine residue to enter the environment as a leak. Chang (2014) reported that the amount of e-liquid (PG, VG, nicotine, flavours, colorants, water) left in spent cartridges varied from 19 to 90% (Buonocore et al., 2017).

As for why nicotine is considered hazardous… It’s toxic when not taking relatively controlled doses I guess, or for non-adults, but it’s probably more harmful to insects? Alpha3031 (t • c) 07:24, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

By the way I see that Environmental impact of cigarettes just redirects to the cigarette article. How about we rename this article to “Environmental impact of cigarettes” and add info such as https://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/chapter-10-tobacco-industry/10-16-the-environmental-impact-of-tobacco-use and https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0025326X24013936 Apparently many people wrongly think that cigarette butts are biodegradable. Chidgk1 (talk) 06:27, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No objection to that. Alpha3031 (t • c) 06:56, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]