The ban on disposable vapes is having little to no impact on devices being thrown away improperly, a senior figure in the waste and recycling industry has said.
Roger Wright, strategy and packaging manager at Biffa, told the BBC: “We’re seeing more vapes in our system, causing more problems, more fires than ever before,”
Wright estimates a million vapes a month are being disposed of in general recycling rather than consumers placing them in dedicated vape bins provided at retail outlets, or making use of the takeback schemes shops selling vapes are obliged to offer.
His comments follow a warning from Imperial Brands that the low price of refillable vapes was causing people to treat them as disposable devices, throwing them away when empty rather than replacing their pods or refreshing their e-liquid.
The National Fire Chiefs Council has previously warned that over 1,200 bin-lorry fires between 2024 and 2023 were caused by batteries being thrown out, equivalent to 4.6 incidents every day, and a 71% rise compared to 2022.
The lithium-ion batteries contained in vapes – be they banned disposable devices or permitted reusable ones – are liable to catch fire when crushed, as can happen during compaction in a bin lorry.
A fire in a refuse lorry in Exeter this summer was directly attributed to a vape being thrown away with general rubbish; the thermal event melted the metal walls of the truck, disabled its electrics and caused £25,000 worth of damage.
A similar incident in Slough this May saw five tonnes of rubbish dumped on the road as fire crews tackled a blaze in another refuse truck, while Hertfordshire Council issued a warning after vapes being thrown away in recycling were said to have caused two fires in the space of a week.
