Why recycle?
A vape is a battery, a toxin, and a pile of plastic — in one flick of the wrist.
Disposable vapes are one of the fastest-growing waste streams in America, and they were never designed with an ending in mind. Here's what's actually at stake when one hits the trash.
The scale of the problem
5.7 per second
Americans throw away 5.7 disposable vapes every second — nearly half a million a day, and climbing (PIRG Education Fund, 2025).
30 tons of lithium
The batteries inside disposables tossed each year hold about 30 tons of lithium — enough for roughly 3,350 electric-vehicle batteries (PIRG, 2025).
448 facility fires
US and Canadian waste facilities logged a record 448 reported fires in 2025, with lithium-ion batteries — increasingly from vapes — a primary cause (Fire Rover).
What's inside every disposable
Lithium-ion battery
The same battery chemistry as your phone, shrunk down and rarely recovered. Crushed or punctured, it can short-circuit and ignite.
Nicotine residue
Leftover e-liquid contains nicotine, which is toxic to people, pets, and waterways — and regulated as hazardous waste from businesses.
Plastic shell & electronics
Single-use plastic housing, a heating coil, a circuit board, LEDs — a pocket-sized bundle of e-waste designed to be tossed after days of use.
What the rules actually say
The EPA is clear on this much: vapes and lithium-ion batteries should never go in household trash or curbside recycling bins. Batteries belong in dedicated collection programs, and nicotine-containing devices need special handling.
For businesses, schools, and other organizations, the bar is higher. The EPA lists discarded nicotine as an acute hazardous waste (RCRA code P075) — households are exempt from those rules, but commercial sources are not — and lithium-ion batteries fall under universal waste rules, with real requirements for storage, transport, and disposal.
You don't need to memorize any of it. That's our job. Whether you're a household with a junk drawer or a school with a confiscation bin, we handle collection and downstream processing so it's done right.
Do
- Store dead vapes in a plastic bag, tub, or box, away from heat
- Keep loose lithium batteries separated or with terminals taped
- Book a pickup once the drawer starts filling up
- Ask us if you're not sure whether we take something
Don't
- Throw vapes or batteries in the trash or recycling bin
- Mail them — USPS prohibits shipping e-cigarettes
- Puncture, crush, or take devices apart
- Leave them baking in a hot car for weeks
What happens after we drive away
Your devices are packaged for safe transport, consolidated, and routed to processors equipped to handle them — batteries recovered for their materials, remaining components managed as the regulated waste they are, instead of leaching in a landfill or sparking a fire in a trash truck.
Our long-term goal is audacious on purpose: divert one billion vapes from landfills by 2033. Every pickup is a rounding error against that number — and that's exactly how we'll get there. One vape at a time.
Sources for the numbers on this page
- PIRG Education Fund, Vape Waste 2 (2025) — 5.7 disposables discarded per second (~500,000/day, from CDC Foundation sales data); ~30 tons of lithium per year, equivalent to ~3,350 EV batteries.
- US EPA, battery collection guidance — e-cigarettes and lithium-ion batteries should never go in household trash or curbside recycling; nicotine is listed as acute hazardous waste (RCRA P075); households are exempt from federal hazardous-waste rules, commercial generators are not (40 CFR 261.4(b)(1)).
- Fire Rover annual fire reports — 448 publicly reported fires at US/Canadian waste and recycling facilities in 2025, with lithium-ion batteries a primary cause.
Ready to clear out that drawer?
Book a pickup in about two minutes. We'll handle everything after the curb.