Firstly, safety – The batteries can still carry an electrical charge and can be dangerous still so if you are not confident then I would recommend you put the whole thing into battery recycling rather than try to break it down yourself first. For those who wish to contine I have put a guide below on how I disassemble and recycle the Crystal Bar disposable electronic vapes or Cigarettes I find.
First of all, get your tools ready, I use a couple of pairs of different sized Pliers, some snippers and a screwdriver.
Ok lets get going. You will see that the plastic tube is only accessible one end and we have to get the metal cap off first.
Use a pair of pliers to lever the metal cap off of the plastic tube. It doesn’t matter if you bend it up too much as you are just going to recycle it anyway.
Next you will see a rubber cap, lever it slightly with some pliers then use it to pull the whole of the insides out of the plastic tube.
Now we have a metal tube and we need to grab the rubber part either end to extract the whole insides out of the metal tube. Don’t worry if it comes apart slightly, just use a screwdriver or pliers to extract any bits left in the metal tube.
Now you should be able to gently pull the wires connected between the battery and the vape liquid tube to separate them.
Now you need to snip the wire from the positive side of the battery to disconnect it.
Then pull off the tape holding the wires to the battery, I couldn’t pull it off very easily so I gave it a careful snip then pulled the wires through.
Now to completely disconnect the battery we just need to snip the two negative wires from the negative side of the battery.
Now just pull the component out of the rubber part to separate them.
Now we need to pull the rubber bits out from the liquid tube to separate the pieces in there.
Sometimes its a good move to give that clear plastic tube a quick rince under the tap before you recycle it as it often has some left over juice. Next we need to pull apart the rubber and fabric parts from the small metal part.
Then grab hold of that metal part with some pliers and use a second pair of pliers to pull out the fabric in the middle.
Once you have done that everything should be nicely separated. Recycle the plastic and metal bits in your normal recycling. The battery can be taken to battery recycling, they have these in lots of the big shops and your council should have various facilities. The electronic part and wires can be put in the waste electrical equipment recycling (all councils have these facilities). The rubber is sometimes recycled but sometimes not. If not you can bin it with the fabric pieces.
Here is a before and after of a large batch of crystal vapes that myself and friends found and recycled.
Well done for recycling these items and having a positive impact, read more here: https://junglebiscuit.com/guide-on-how-to-recycle-disposable-electronic-vapes-or-cigarettes/