The UK-wide ban on disposable vapes has failed to stop millions of the devices from being wrongly discarded—almost as if the ban never happened. Vapes are still causing serious problems for the waste industry,
According to the strategy and packaging manager of leading waste management firm Biffa, Roger Wright
We’re seeing more vapes in our system, causing more problems, more fires than ever before.
Wright suggests this might be a temporary problem, partly due to pre-ban stock sell-offs, but he also highlights that many cheap reusable vapes are being thrown away instead of reused or recycled. The vape industry itself insists the ban is working and blames the rise in waste on illegal sales.
Before the ban, Biffa found around 200,000 vapes per month in general recycling. Since June, that figure has risen by 3%. These practical problems add to the earlier warnings that calls to prohibit the devices were not evidence-based.
Since Biffa manages nearly a fifth of the UK’s waste, the industry as a whole could be seeing up to a million reusable vapes wrongly each month.
