A UK-wide ban on disposable vapes was supposed to curb environmental damage and ease pressure on the UK’s waste system. But just three months on, a leading waste firm says the policy is having the opposite effect.
Roger Wright, strategy and packaging manager at Biffa, said the number of vapes being thrown into general recycling – where they don’t belong – has actually increased since the ban came into force in June.
“We’re seeing more vapes in our system, causing more problems, more fires than ever before,” Wright said.
The ban, introduced primarily to protect young people and children’s health, was also pitched as a way to reduce the millions of single-use devices being binned each week. But figures from Biffa suggest the flow of devices into recycling has barely slowed.
In April and May, the last two months before the ban, its facilities in Suffolk, Teesside and London recorded around 200,000 vapes on average incorrectly mixed in with household recycling. In the three months since June, that figure has been three per cent higher.
A million vapes a month thrown into recycling
Given Biffa handles almost a fifth of the UK’s waste, Wright estimates that across the sector around a million vapes a month are still entering general recycling. “The ban hasn’t changed people’s behaviour. If anything, the problem has grown,” he said.
Part of the rise can be explained by stockpiling before the ban, with retailers discounting disposables in a final push to clear shelves. But Wright argues that the vape industry’s response has created new challenges.
In the wake of the ban, many manufacturers have launched cheap reusable devices. These products are designed to be refilled, but retailers report that customers are discarding them after use and buying another – effectively treating them as disposables under a different name.
“We still see a lot of these reusables in the bins, because people have used them as a disposable item,” said Wright.
Lithium batteries inside vapes pose a particular hazard when thrown into the wrong waste stream. When crushed or punctured in sorting facilities, they can spark fires. This is an increasingly common and costly problem for waste operators.
The ban ‘not achieving either’ of its goals
The vape industry has said any rise in devices being disposed of improperly is more likely linked to black market sales rather than mainstream products.
But waste experts argue that the legislation has simply shifted the problem rather than solving it. Instead of cutting the environmental harm of disposables, the system is still being flooded with short-lived devices that are difficult to recycle and dangerous when binned.
“The aim was to protect health and the environment,” said Wright. “Right now, it feels like we’ve ended up with neither.”
