Engineer powers his entire home using 500 discarded vapes: 'Over a million tossed out every day'

Single-use vapes, or e-cigarettes, contain lithium batteries and liquids, encased in plastic, that when discarded, can leach chemicals into the environment or even explode and cause fires at waste plants.In the United Kingdom, these single-use devices have been banned. Beginning in June 2025, it became illegal for businesses to sell or supply “disposable” vapes, as a means to reduce harm to the environment and curb a rise in youth vaping.But that doesn’t mean the threat is gone.Chris Doel, a 26-year-old electronics engineer, set out to demonstrate how much power is wasted when these e-cigarettes are discarded.“This whole vape collection thing has gotten completely out of hand,” he began a now-viral video shared on his YouTube channel.

“Let’s see if we can power a house of these things.”What stood out to Doel in particular is that these single-use vapes were marketed as disposable, even though they contained a lithium-ion battery, which can be charged again and again.“These are the exact same batteries that we use in our phones and in our laptops. But these vapes have been designed to be thrown away after just a single use, which is just completely insane to me,” he said in the video.“So, I’ve been on a bit of a mission to expose this by building a fully rechargeable power bank and e-bike battery out of them.

And now I think I'm going to dial it up a couple of notches.”Doel's collection of discarded vapes. Photo courtesy of Chris Doel/InstagramWith 500 vapes that he either collected or received from a local shop, he stripped the batteries and created a power reserve large enough to power his entire home for eight hours — or power only his DIY workshop for several days.Of course, he said at the top of his video, “Do not attempt to replicate anything I do in this video.

It covers some pretty dangerous stuff.”But his experiment does pose a meaningful question: Could these wasted batteries really be put to use in a better way?“This is a massive power wall, so it’s powering the laptop that I’m speaking to you on,” Doel told NBC News in a video interview. “It’s powering the Wi-Fi up there, all the lights. I’m completely off-grid right now.”He continued.“I’ve been able to boil water with the kettle, flip on the microwave, turn on my oven,” Doel said. “I pretty much could power everything in my house.”It was not a particularly easy effort, though.

In total, building the 2.5 kWh power wall from discarded batteries took about seven months, constructed during any free time Doel had away from his day job as an engineer.But imagining the scale of the waste kept his eyes on the prize.“At their peak in the U.K. alone, over a million of these are being tossed away every single day,” Doel said in his video. “And while some places are finally banning them … this is still happening at a mind-boggling scale.”The 500 vape batteries he used don’t even make a dent in the global issue at hand.

Recent data from Public Interest Research Group suggests that Americans threw away an estimated 500,000 disposable vapes every day in 2023. In just one year, that equates to enough lithium for over 3,000 massive electric vehicle batteries.“All of them have got incredibly rare earth minerals inside of them,” Doel told NBC News.Nathan Proctor, the senior director of the Public Interest Research Group, added that it’s not easy to recycle these batteries, either.“It’s expensive and challenging because you have to both interact with something that’s a hazardous chemical and is electronic waste,” Proctor told NBC News.With the U.K.

ban, the sale of these items is decreasing, but Doel said consumers are still incentivized to buy and discard items and contribute to the same waste cycle, even if they are not marketed as single-use items.“I’m still able to get hundreds and hundreds of these things,” Doel said.Doel's next project will be to power a small electric vehicle with the discarded batteries. Photo courtesy of Chris Doel/InstagramWhile regulatory bodies continue to figure out the best way to curb the environmental and public health impacts of vaping, he’ll keep plugging away.“I’ve just bought a … small electric vehicle, and I think I’m going to install this into the electric vehicle and have a car powered by disposable vapes,” he told NBC News.

“That is definitely next on the list.”‍You may also like: Man invents solar-powered backpack that turns into a bed and a generator for homeless people‍‍Header image courtesy of Chris Doel/Instagram