---
title: Vape Battery Fires Cost American Waste Plants $95 Million a Year, and a National Recycling Route Has Opened
description: Americans throw away nearly 500,000 disposable vapes a day and the lithium cells inside start fires in waste plants. A national recycling route has now opened.
author: Darie Nani (Editor-in-Chief)
updated: 2026-07-29T17:29:53.097Z
canonical: https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/disposable-vape-battery-fires-national-recycling-route
categories: Green Tech
content_type: News
region: United States
publication: Sovereign Magazine
access: members
schema_type: Article
---

Americans throw away nearly 500,000 disposable vapes every day, and almost all of them go into the trash with a charged lithium cell still inside. Those cells are the same kind that power a phone or a laptop, and they behave the same way when a garbage truck crushes them. On Wednesday, TerraCycle Commercial, a division of the recycling company TerraCycle, opened a national collection and recycling service for the devices, which the company says is the first route of its kind in the United States.

The waste stream it is aimed at has been growing fast. Americans discarded [5.7 disposable vapes per second in 2023, up from 4.5 per second the year before](https://pirg.org/edfund/resources/vape-waste-the-environmental-harms-of-disposable-vapes/), according to the PIRG Education Fund, which drew on data from the CDC Foundation. That is 35 million more devices a year than its first count two years earlier. PIRG puts the lithium thrown out with them at about 30 tons a year, enough to make batteries for roughly 3,350 electric cars.

## The Fires Start in Compactors and Garbage Trucks

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