Collection and recycling these safely at scale seems mind boggling difficult. Various batteries, electronics, resin encrusted elements, oils, plastics, and mouthy guckiness.

I would love to see how this process works. Banning them seems to be the most economic and safest solution.

You’re correct, it isn’t worthwhile in either case, imo. However, I’m more curious as to what the “solution” is so supposed to achieve.

If you took the lithium from every disposable vape imported into the US yearly and instead used the lithium for industrial scale batteries, you’d get like 100. That’s it. Or maybe 5k batteries for EVs. That’s about 0.005% of yearly EV sales.