Vapes were originally touted as a cheaper and safer alternative to tobacco, and while they still serve this purpose, they’ve become a defining image of throwaway culture.
Around five million single-use vapes are thrown away every week in the UK - a fourfold increase on 2022. This amounts to eight vapes being discarded every second, according to research by Material Focus.
Disposable vapes are difficult and expensive to recycle, spelling disaster for the environment and local councils, who are struggling to cope with the amount being thrown away every day.
Watch On The Ground on Independent TV.
Around five million single-use vapes are thrown away every week in the UK - a fourfold increase on 2022. This amounts to eight vapes being discarded every second, according to research by Material Focus.
Disposable vapes are difficult and expensive to recycle, spelling disaster for the environment and local councils, who are struggling to cope with the amount being thrown away every day.
Watch On The Ground on Independent TV.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 Disposable vapes first hit the UK market in 2005.
00:04 Since then, they've exploded in popularity,
00:07 with around 4 million people vaping in the UK.
00:10 But there's a hidden cost.
00:13 Around eight single-use vapes are thrown away
00:15 every second in the UK,
00:17 leaving a growing mountain of plastic waste
00:19 and, crucially, lithium batteries in their wake.
00:22 With around 80% of people who use vapes
00:25 saying that they don't dispose of them correctly,
00:27 it spells disaster for the environment
00:29 and for local councils.
00:31 Here is the true cost of disposable vapes.
00:36 When you're done with a disposable vape,
00:37 you're meant to take it to a proper recycling facility
00:40 like this, where it'll then be sent off and taken apart
00:43 so the different materials inside can be recycled properly.
00:47 But how often are people actually doing this?
00:49 -We do know that 120,000 a month in North London alone
00:55 are being used,
00:58 and at least half of those are being thrown on our streets
01:01 or just simply put in bins.
01:02 That's a huge amount of precious materials
01:05 that can be used for other uses.
01:08 -Inside every vape is a lithium battery.
01:11 Lithium is a finite resource
01:12 that comes with an energy-intensive mining process.
01:15 If you were to take all the lithium
01:17 being thrown away every year inside disposable vapes,
01:20 it would add up to around 10 tons
01:22 being sent to landfill or incinerators.
01:24 That's enough to make batteries for 1,200 electric cars.
01:28 It's expensive, but recycling centers
01:30 are beginning to recapture some of those precious metals.
01:34 I'm at the Sweep Kusakowski Recycling Centre in Kent,
01:37 and as you can see behind me,
01:38 there is just a mountain of electronic waste.
01:41 This is only a small percentage
01:43 of the amount we get through in the UK.
01:44 The rest will get sent to landfill or incinerated.
01:47 So if, when you're done with your single-use vape
01:49 and you recycle it properly, this is where it might end up.
01:54 Justin, can you tell me a bit about where we are
01:56 and what sort of stuff gets sent here?
01:58 So we're in City Mall in Kent.
02:00 We're Sweep Kusakowski.
02:01 We're a waste electronics recycler.
02:04 So everything you're gonna see around us
02:05 is kettles, toasters, computers,
02:07 microwaves, vacuum cleaners.
02:09 All those gadgets that we've got around our home
02:11 come to us for recycling.
02:13 This is about 1,000 vapes.
02:15 It's about a week's worth of deliveries for us
02:17 when it comes into all the other electronics we're recycling.
02:20 So quite a small amount, really,
02:22 compared to the amount that are actually being thrown away.
02:25 How many are being thrown away every week?
02:27 Well, the latest numbers are saying 5 million a week
02:31 are being thrown away in the UK.
02:33 Those are ending up, certainly not with us,
02:36 they're ending up in the rubbish collections,
02:39 there's road sweepings,
02:42 in with our cans and bottles type of recycling waste.
02:45 So they really are popping up all over the place.
02:47 Should we take a look at them?
02:48 Sure.
02:49 Right.
02:51 (vapour hissing)
02:53 Gosh, so that's a thousand, roughly.
02:59 Yeah, about a thousand vapes.
03:01 And you've got these in the last week?
03:03 That's right.
03:03 Would you be able to show us what's inside a vape
03:06 so we can get a better idea of how they're recycled?
03:08 Yeah, of course.
03:09 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
03:10 I can open up one for you and show you.
03:12 So that's the lithium battery that powers the vape,
03:19 but also causes so many problems
03:21 because it is prone to catching fire.
03:23 And that happens quite often?
03:25 Can do, yes.
03:26 And this is the cartridge section.
03:28 There's a little bit still left in there
03:29 just where the tube's been squeezed.
03:31 So what happens to the lithium battery
03:34 once these are taken apart?
03:35 So when we add them, we're able to separate the battery
03:38 and the battery can go back round again
03:39 and get recycled ones.
03:41 Likewise, the tube and the plastic.
03:44 So the real key is actually capturing them as a waste stream
03:48 and we're just not when it goes dead.
03:51 This is expensive for councils
03:53 because vapes are sold as a single unit
03:55 that then need to be individually taken apart by hand.
03:58 The lithium batteries inside vapes
04:01 mean that they fall under government regulation
04:03 for waste from electrical and electronic equipment.
04:06 Vape manufacturers should be covering
04:08 the cost of collection and recycling,
04:10 but over 90% of vape producers in the UK
04:14 are failing to meet environmental regulations.
04:18 The single-use vape has been on the UK market
04:21 for three and a bit years.
04:22 And in that time, hardly any producer or any retailer
04:25 was meeting any of their obligations.
04:27 They basically went undercover,
04:29 yet have grown to be a massive market.
04:31 And now we think at least 5 million of them
04:33 are being thrown away every week instead of being recycled.
04:36 And that's because retailers who had an obligation
04:38 to offer drop-off points for them in store,
04:41 and the producers and importers who had a responsibility
04:44 for paying for the recycling
04:45 have been avoiding that responsibility
04:47 whilst making massive profits as well.
04:49 So it's the profit that they've been making
04:52 essentially has been at a cost to the public purse
04:55 and avoiding all of the environmental and fire safety issues
05:00 that are being caused by them.
05:01 When the regulations were written,
05:03 people were talking about fridge mountains.
05:05 They were worried about moving from cathode ray tube
05:08 television through to flat panels.
05:09 They didn't envisage that we would have a piece of fast tech
05:14 like a vape that would be sold in hundreds of millions
05:16 and we'd have hundreds of millions of lithium ion batteries
05:19 out there and in the wrong place.
05:21 So basically the regulations have not been able
05:23 to adapt quickly enough to them.
05:26 We reached out to some of the big manufacturers
05:28 of single-use vapes to find out
05:30 how they're meeting their legal obligation
05:31 to cover recycling and collection costs.
05:34 Local councils are already cash-strapped
05:37 and the cost of properly disposing of vapes
05:39 is stretching already tight budgets.
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