Save the Environment, and Your Pocket, with Maker's Fun Duck's Guide to E-Cigarette Battery Salvage

Pseudonymous YouTuber "Maker's Fun Duck" has put together a guide for saving money and helping clean up the environment — by safely salvaging the lithium-ion batteries from discarded electronic cigarettes for reuse in portable projects.

"While walking in the local forest I found this cylindrical item, and I picked it up to throw away to a garbage bin because littering in a forest is not a nice thing to do," Duck explains. "On my way back home I found a couple more of the same things, and when I did so I saw electronics in them and this is why i wanted to take a closer look. I have found what they are they are: Disposable e-cigarettes. How they work is you buy one of them and use them until the battery dies out and then you just throw them away."

Even if disposed of properly, that's a waste — given that the devices use lithium-ion batteries which, once removed from their disposable housing, are perfect for recharging and driving portable projects. While other guides to their salvage exist, Duck found that they typically offered "very dangerous ways to charge [the batteries]," and so set about putting together their own guide with a safer approach.

"They were just connecting a USB cable to a wall socket and cutting the USB cable and then connecting it to the battery directly," Duck explains. "[This] is quite risky: These batteries might explode if you do not charge them properly. If you get lucky and do not blow up anything, you are reducing the battery life significantly.

"But if you charge it properly you can use your e-cigarette [batteries] even for a few years with the peak performance. What you need is a lithium-ion battery charger: These are designed for charging lithium batteries. You don't need to do anything fancy like soldering or something like that, you just need to take one out [of the e-cigarette]."

The full video is now available on Maker's Fun Duck's YouTube channel.