One of the most popular reasons given by disposable vaping products proponents for supporting these products is that cigarette butts have become a disaster for the environment. A Keep Britain Tidy study shows that cigarette packets and butts constitute 68% of all litter collected in England. This makes them the most prevalent form of litter in the country.
Cigarette butts are made from plastic materials which are not biodegradable. Furthermore, they are all single-use. This means that most of these butts find their way into landfills, compost pits and open fields where they continuously leach toxic chemicals into groundwater and the surrounding soils. This can affect both plants and animals.
To help solve this problem most governments have been working to help reduce smocking. However, many are recommending the use of vaping products as a way to help people quit. In England, the Khan Review just made this recommendation.
The problem is that this recommendation comes at a time when there is an increase in the sale of disposable vapes. According to surveys by NielsenIQ, Elf Bar, a single-use e-cigarette brand sold 25 million units in the last year becoming the biggest selling e-cigarette product in the UK. At the same time, reusable brands such as Cirro, Logic and Vype have recorded a drop in sales as consumers prefer single-use products.
According to Ryan Milburn, the NielsenIQ analyst, “Consumers have dropped these brands, moving into disposable options,”. A study by the ASH found that the use of disposable vapes has grown to over 52% in 2022 from about 7% in 2020. This shift in consumer preference is becoming a problem.
The Bureau of investigative journalism conducted a joint investigation with Material Focus and found that every week more than half of disposable vapes bought get thrown away. This means that 1.3 million disposable vapes are thrown away. This gets more plastic products in places they should not be.
The biggest problem with using disposable vapes is that many manufacturers of these products do not have a plan for managing the environmental problem their products create. According to the co-founder of UKEcig Store, Harris Tanvir, “The growth of disposable vapes was largely unpredicted and even for those that had an inkling that it was coming, the scale and pace of the growth have been unprecedented. This has meant that the majority of vape suppliers have not had the time or resources to adequately plan a sustainable approach that considers waste,”.
The other major environmental problem associated with these products is their batteries. Each product comes with a lithium battery. It is estimated that vaping products’ lithium batteries capable of powering 1200 electric cars are sent to landfills yearly in the UK alone. These batteries are very toxic and cause a lot of problems for waste management.
The government and many stakeholders are now calling on the manufacturers to begin taking responsibility to protect the environment. Already many vaping products retailers provide drop-off points where these disposable products can be sent once used. This way the manufacturers can ship them back to the factory for recycling.
