I pick up all the ones I see because I’m collecting the batteries out of them. After making sure they won’t spontaneously combust through damaged seals or corrosion, they get a piece of painters tape over all the metal, and placed in a fireproof battery charging bag.
I intend to make little rc things out of these, or in some cases I’ve managed to replace the 2 AA batteries in electronics with a few vape batteries in parallel.
With the right testing equipment and know-how (safety first when dealing with things that can burn your life down) You can do quite a bit with these.
And holy shit the amount I find while just walking or biking around is insane, these things are an environmental disaster and I’ve tried to get people I know to at least switch to refillable tanks, but they’re “too expensive” (only up-front, long term they are many orders of magnitude cheaper) and “it’s too much work to clean/replace coils” (alcohol and cotton batting for both cleaning and coil filler work nicely) which just tells me they care more about their minor convenience than the entire goddamn planet.
I don’t even fucking vape and I know these things!