Councillor Grainne Rason talking about disposable vapes and the issues with recycling the devices.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 Why are we standing outside of Tesco's? We're standing outside of Tesco's because
00:03 this is one of the 14 places all across the whole of the Haven borough where you
00:08 can actually take disposable vapes for recycling. It's really hard to actually
00:13 recycle them. Why are vapes so bad? Oh they are the worst single item not to go in
00:23 your ordinary waste. They contain harmful chemicals, they contain a very
00:29 reactive metal called lithium which is expensive and can be reused and we are
00:35 throwing it away. They also contain chemicals, volatile chemicals which are
00:40 harmful to your lungs and throwing them away is a total waste and they're really
00:46 hard to recycle if you need to. Why are they so bad for children? Oh they are
00:51 absolutely dreadful for children because they are addictive. When vapes first came
00:57 out we didn't appreciate that they were harmful, they were meant to be for people
01:02 to give up smoking and what's happened since is they've been heavily marketed
01:06 at children and they're a gateway to smoking and to drugs but they also we
01:11 now know they cause lung damage. Now you are a litter picker, why is litter
01:17 picking important apart from the massive bag of the one out vapes you've got there?
01:21 Do you want to get more out? Well litter picking is important because it actually over time it takes the litter off the street and
01:28 discourages people adding to it because when it's not there people don't litter.
01:34 So and also long term the stuff that's left to litter breaks down, becomes
01:41 microplastics and then enters the environment it's impossible to get rid
01:45 of so please with your litter put it in the bin. How long has it taken you to
01:51 collect all those vapes? About as long as you think. How long? I would say that this four or five weeks
02:00 because every time I go out I pick up two or three more and they're just lying on the street.
02:05 Well done to the UK and Co-op because they are doing this voluntarily. It's the
02:11 manufacturers responsibility to recycle vapes. These shops don't have to do it
02:16 and they're doing it for the community and I'm going to say well done. So when
02:20 you have a disposable vape what are you meant to do with it? What you could do
02:26 is bring it back to one of these stores so it can go back into the system and
02:31 get recycled. It's difficult because there's not many around.