Vapes and their impact
I am Drew, a female Waste Prevention Officer for the Council. In the New Year, we desperately need to tackle the problem single-use, disposable vapes are having on our environment. Research conducted has found that 8.2 million vapes are disposed of incorrectly every week, this means 13 are thrown away every second. The issues revolving vapes aren’t going away.
Material Focus surveyed 778 adults in the UK above the age of 16 who have purchased a vape or e-cigarette in the last 12 months. The conducted research found that 3.3 million vapes are ‘stashed’ in cupboards and drawers.
Vapes are unfortunately, reinforcing a throwaway culture and a linear economy of take-make-dispose and the longevity of the products are not intended to last. I believe this is because of profit and labelling them as ‘disposable’ means people will buy more when their current one dies.
There is a ban coming into force in 2025 to stop the sale of disposable vapes, the ban is yet to be finalised with the sale of products to strictly be sold to people who were born before January 1st, 2009, and not afterwards. There are many environmental reasons as to why the government is implementing this ban including the fire risk they pose and the contamination they bring to wildlife and the environment not to mention the health risks associated with them too.
The fast growing vape industry isn’t going to slow down anytime soon and new, improved vapes are already being designed and rolled out to consumers. A new style vape called the “Big Puff” has recently hit the UK markets and within six months this new style of vape has been purchased 3 million times a week but there is no marketing strategy put in place on how these need to be disposed of, 77% of the people surveyed by Material Focus UK have said they feel there isn’t enough information on how to recycle their vapes.
Vapes are powered by lithium-ion batteries and when disposed of incorrectly we are wasting the material that can be recovered to power electric cars. The amount of vapes discarded this year equated to enough lithium-ion to power 10,127 electric cars. How do we recover the lithium-ion battery? When vapes are disposed of correctly and they arrive at the sorting facility, the crew there dissemble all the vapes, by hand. This process is time consuming but strongly outweighs the process of incorrect disposal.
What happens if I put a vape in my bin at home? When tipped into the truck and the mechanical hand crushes the load into the back wall, the vape could explode and become highly flammable. This is a message we need to get to more people, as the costly impact the fires are having on local authorities is troubling. When a vape causes a fire in a kerbside collection truck the crews need to empty the contents of the truck onto the public highway to safely put the fire out, evidently this will pose many health risks to public health as well as endangering the collection crew.
To conclude, how do you recycle vapes? At the Council, we offer small electrical recycling from kerbside collections if you pop the items in a clear plastic bag and place them on top of your bin, the crews will then place these in the trucks separately from the waste in your bin.
Moving forward to enable a circular economy, all products not just vapes need to be made with longevity being at the forefront of the production of a product. For vapes, there needs to be a widely accessible take back scheme that enables consumers of vapes to take them back to the store they got it from, or a similar vape store that can recycle these with waste companies. A widespread communication campaign also needs to be introduced, an advert in which consumers will see daily either on the TV or their mobile devices that inform them of the dangers associated with binning vapes at home. If a product is labelled as ‘disposable’, people will think they can place them in bins at home.
For more information and Council resources on vape disposal and recycling, refer to our website: Vapes | Buckinghamshire Recycles