Disposable vapes FAQs

This week (16 April 2024), MPs voted in favour of the tobacco Age of Sale legislation (the Tobacco and Vapes Bill). This positive step means that the UK is closer to introducing legislation that could help prevent future generations from taking up smoking.

The Age of Sale legislation has to get through some further Parliamentary processes before it can become law. After the title of the Bill was read out in parliament (also called the first reading) on 20 March, MPs had their first chance to vote during the second reading, which happened earlier today.

MPs voted 383 to 67 in favour of the Bill – a majority of 316.

The Tobacco and Vapes Bill will now go to Committee Stage, where the legislation will be scrutinised in detail by the Bill Committee.

If it becomes law, the Tobacco and Vapes Bill will make sure that people born on or after 1 January 2009 (turning 15 this year) can never legally be sold tobacco in their lifetime, paving the way for the first ever smokefree generation.

Smoking itself won’t be criminalised, and anyone who can legally buy tobacco now won’t be prevented from doing so in future.

Enforcement officers will be empowered to give ‘on-the-spot fines’ of £100 to uphold the new laws and clamp down on underage sales of tobacco and vaping products. This builds on a maximum £2,500 fine that local authorities can already impose on retailers.

The government has also already announced extra funding to help people who smoke quit, including a £70 million boost for local ‘stop smoking’ services.

Alongside the tobacco Age of Sale legislation, the UK Government is also taking action to tackle youth vaping by making e-cigarettes less appealing to young people, and has announced a ban on disposable vapes.

The LGA believes this is a progressive piece of legislation that would undoubtedly impact on smoking prevalence and ultimately reduce rates of smoking-related disease. We look forward to working with the Government and others to enforce this ban as well as ensure plans for a smokefree generation are a success. Read our key messages

In January 2024, the government announced that disposable vapes will be banned in England. The Scottish Government and Welsh Government have also confirmed they intend to introduce legislation.

Defra have published draft regulations which set out the scope of the ban on the sale and supply of disposable vapes in England. This includes both nicotine and non-nicotine containing products.

They have also published a draft impact assessment of the policy.

Defra asked the public for views on these documents (by 25 March 2024) and we responded with our key lines outlined within these FAQs.

Since then, Defra have been working to adapt the regulations in line with feedback received.

The purpose of Defra’s consultation, introduced in December 2023, was to seek views on reforms to the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Regulations 2013, which are intended to drive up levels of separately collected WEEE for re-use and recycling.

Defra has stated that the reforms will support the drive towards a more circular economy by ensuring products are designed to have a lower environmental impact than those which we consume today. They want to ensure producers and distributors of electrical and electronic products finance the full net cost of collection and proper treatment of products that end up as waste. The consultation closed on 7 March 2024.

We responded to highlight that polluters, not councils, should pick up the cost of dealing with the increasingly complex and hazardous waste stream of electrical items. The producer responsibility scheme needs to be reformed and changes that can be made within existing regulations, such as creating a new category for vapes, should be implemented without further delay. Read our full response

The LGA has released a response to the government’s consultation on their website.

If one UK nation decides to ban single-use vapes while another doesn't, the implications would be influenced by the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 (UKIMA). This act establishes market access principles, including mutual recognition, to facilitate the free movement of goods and services within the UK. If, for example, Scotland enacts a ban on single-use vapes, but England does not, the market access principles suggest that this ban may not apply to vapes entering Scotland from England.

The joint UK-wide consultation on creating a smokefree generation and tackling youth vaping (which closed on 6 December) represented a departure from previous unilateral initiatives.

This ‘four nations’ approach marks something of a departure for the management of the UK internal market under the UKIMA market access principles. Joint consultations have previously only been announced between the UK government and no more than two of the three devolved governments (e.g. on the introduction of a deposit return scheme for England, Wales and Northern Ireland).

On matters of policy, the devolved governments (and the UK government legislating for England) have generally preferred to go their own way, rather than regulate through more cooperative ‘four nations’ multilateral initiatives.

This collaborative approach might indicate a willingness to coordinate policies multilaterally, potentially avoiding conflicts with the UKIMA market access principles.

The consequences of divergent policies on single-use vapes could include disparities in regulations and enforcement across different UK nations. The 'four nations' multilateral approach is seen as an experiment that may lead to a less confrontational method of governing the UK internal market. However, the effectiveness of this approach remains uncertain, and lasting impacts may require significant reforms to UKIMA or a change in policy at the Westminster level.

Producers must submit information about their products to the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency (MHRA) through the MHRA Submission Portal. All e-cigarettes must be notified and published by the MHRA before they can be sold. The number of disposable vapes registered has grown exponentially over the past four years.

2019 – 2020: 458
2020 – 2021: 297
2021 – 2022: 3,881
2022 – 2023: 7,605
1April 2023 - 24 August 2023: 3,250

On 22 November 2023 alone, there were 46 new disposable vape products registered on the MHRA portal.

The list of organisations who have called for a ban on disposable vapes continues to grow. This includes (amongst others):

The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, RCPCH, called for an outright ban on disposable vapes in June 2023 due to their disproportionate use among children and young people and their detrimental impact on the environment.
In September 2023, Public Health Scotland (PHS) welcomed the Scottish Government’s commitment to consult on plans to ban the sale of single-use vapes as a measure that can benefit both people and planet.
Public Health Wales called for a ban on disposable vapes in their response to the government’s consultation on creating a smokefree generation.
Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) also called for a ban, stating that disposable vapes consume huge amounts of natural resources, contribute to litter, and can present a fire hazard at waste facilities.
LARAC, the Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee, called for a ban and said the devices present a risk to collection crews as well as on waste infrastructure. The body said, ‘the lack of established disposal or recycling routes for vapes leads to their improper disposal or littering.’
Champs Public Health Collaborative called for a ban on disposable vapes in June 2023. Directors of Public Health in Cheshire and Merseyside’s nine local council areas – Cheshire East, Cheshire West and Chester, Halton, Knowsley, Liverpool, Sefton, St Helens, Warrington and Wirral – issued a statement expressing their concern about the increase of the use of vapes in the subregion, particularly amongst children.
The North London Waste Authority (NLWA) has urged the government to ban the sale and manufacture of unnecessary and unsustainable single-use vapes on environmental grounds. NLWA Chair, Cllr Clyde Loakes, has developed a video explaining the journey of a disposable vape and how difficult the products are to recycle. NLWA has developed a template response for those wishing to take part in the Government’s ongoing consultation, setting out why a total ban on unsustainable single-use vapes is the simplest solution.
The RSPCA have developed a campaign #VexedAboutVapes to call on the UK Government to ban disposable vapes due to their detrimental impacts on wildlife and the environment
The Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, called for a ban in June 2023 and said it was ‘insidious these products are intentionally marketed and promoted to children’.
In December 2023, the World Health Organisation (WHO) urged governments to treat e-cigarettes similarly to tobacco and ban all flavours, citing that they could drive nicotine addiction among non-smokers, especially children and young people.
NASUWT, the Teachers’ Union, called on the Government to do more to protect children from the dangers of disposable vapes, as a survey by the union found 85% of teachers believe vaping is a problem on school premises.
ASH Scotland called for a ban in June 2023, with their Chief Executive Sheila Duffy stating, ‘a ban on disposable e-cigarettes is, in our view, the clearest most workable option to tackle both the environmental impacts as well as the health concerns about children vaping.’
The Scottish environmental campaigner Laura Young (also known as Less Waste Laura) has been a long-standing campaigner for a ban on disposables, highlighting their environmental impacts.
The Wildlife and Countryside Link called for a ban in March 2023, stating that disposable vapes are fundamentally flawed in their design and are inherently unsustainable products.
The Marine Conservation Charity (MCS), the Green Alliance and Greenpeace have also called for a ban on environmental grounds.

We’re aware of many councils across England who have passed their own motions calling for a ban on disposable vapes. These include (but are not limited to):

In Scotland, over all but three local councils have echoed our call for a ban on the manufacture and sale of disposable vapes.

The Welsh Government has also called for ban on disposable vapes.

In Northern Ireland, a number of councils have called for a ban on disposable vapes, including Belfast City Council, Newry, Mourne and Down District Council and Derry City and Strabane Council.

On 12 October 2023, the Government launched a public consultation on creating a smokefree generation and tackling youth vaping.

The government has stated that it is committed to clamping down on vapes being promoted to children while ensuring adults who want to quit smoking remain supported.

The consultation launched on 12 October and closed on 6 December 2023.

Proposals being consulted on include:

Making it an offence for anyone born on or after 1 January 2009 to be sold tobacco products
Restricting the flavours and descriptions of vapes so that vape flavours are no longer targeted at children – we want to ensure this is done in a way that continues to support adult smokers to switch
Regulating point of sale displays in retail outlets so that vapes are kept out of sight from children and away from products that appeal to them, such as sweets
Regulating vape packaging and product presentation, ensuring that neither the device nor its packaging is targeted to children
Considering restricting the sale of disposable vapes, which are clearly linked to the rise in vaping in children. These products are not only attractive to children but also incredibly harmful to the environment
Exploring further restrictions for non-nicotine vapes and other nicotine consumer products such as nicotine pouches
Exploring whether increasing the price of vapes will reduce the number of young people using them
Introducing new powers for local authorities to issue on-the-spot fines (Fixed Penalty Notices) to enforce age of sale legislation of tobacco products and vapes

We are pleased that the Government has listened to councils and is consulting on bringing forward measures to restrict the availability of vapes to children.

However, disposable vapes are an inherently unsustainable products, meaning an outright ban remains the most effective solution to this problem.

The LGA response to the government’s consultation can be found here.

Following the consultation period, the UK Government, Scottish Government and Welsh Government intend to bring forward legislation as soon as possible.

In Northern Ireland, the outcome of this consultation will inform decisions of incoming Ministers and the Northern Ireland Executive, or in the absence of Ministers, those decisions that can be taken under the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2022.

On 4^th October 2023, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced a series of proposals to address the harms caused by smoking and to curb the rise in youth vaping. A summary of these proposals is as follows:

To create the first smoke-free generation so children turning 14 or younger this year will never be able to be legally sold cigarettes. This will mean effectively raising the age of sale by one year each year for this generation (born on or after 1 January 2009) to prevent them and future generations from ever taking up smoking in the first place, as there is no safe age to smoke. This will implement the recommendation from the independent review last year. This has the potential to phase out smoking in young people almost completely as early as 2040. It could mean up to 1.7 million fewer people smoke by 2075 and has the potential to avoid up to 115,000 cases of strokes, heart disease, lung cancer and other lung diseases.
To support people to quit smoking, by more than doubling the funding available (to around £138 million) for local stop smoking services to support a total of around 360,000 people a year to quit smoking. We will also be providing an additional £5 million this year and then £15 million a year thereafter to fund national tobacco marketing campaigns to explain the changes, the benefits of quitting and support available. This is in addition to previous interventions announced earlier this year, such as the national rollout of a ‘swap to stop’ scheme – supporting 1 million smokers to swap cigarettes for vapes and our announcement to provide evidence-based financial incentives scheme for all pregnant women who smoke by the end of 2024. We are also currently consulting on introducing mandatory cigarette pack inserts, to provide more information to help people to quit smoking.
To curb the rise in youth vaping by consulting on measures to reduce the appeal and availability of vapes to children – striking a balance with ensuring vapes are available for adults to help them quit smoking. Later this month, we will consult on: restricting the flavours and descriptions of vapes so that vape flavours are no longer targeted at children, but remain available for adult smokers; regulating point of sale displays in retail outlets so that vapes are kept out of sight from children and away from products that appeal to them, such as sweets; regulating vape packaging and product presentation, ensuring that neither the device nor its packaging is targeted to children; look at stopping the sale of disposable vapes, which are clearly linked to the rise in vaping in children and are incredibly harmful to the environment and; close loopholes in the law which allow children to get free samples and buy non-nicotine vapes.
To strengthen enforcement activity, through new funding (£30 million a year), new powers to fine rogue retailers on the spot who sell tobacco products or vapes to people underage, action to track down illicit tobacco and vaping products, and take further steps to enhance online age verification so that age of sale law is enforced across both online and face-to-face sales.

Links

The press release can be found here: Prime Minister to create ‘smokefree generation’ by ending cigarette sales to those born on or after 1 January 2009 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
The full published paper can be found here: Stopping the start: our new plan to create a smokefree generation - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
LGA statement on PM smoking and vaping announcements | Local Government Association
Earlier this year, we published Local action towards a smoke free future. These seven case studies describe the efforts of local councils across England to improve health and wellbeing through tackling smoking.

On 14 July, the LGA released a statement calling for the Government to ban the sale and manufacture of disposable vapes by 2024. We said that it is crucial that that ban comes into effect rapidly, as with the EU proposing a ban in 2026 and France rolling out a ban in Dec 2023, there is a risk that as markets close disposable vapes will flood into the UK.

Disposable vapes are a hazard for waste and litter collection and cause fires in bin lorries. Research by insurer Zurich Municipal revealed bin lorry blazes have surged 62 per cent in two years while house fires sparked by vapes have soared 108 per cent in the same period.

Research conducted by Material Focus amongst UK councils has identified that over 700 fires in waste trucks and sites are caused by batteries that haven’t been removed from electricals. This includes lithium-ion batteries commonly used in disposable vapes. Disposable vapes are designed as one unit and the lithium-ion battery cannot easily be separated from the other components, so they should not be disposed of in litter bins or in household waste and recycling bins. Recycling requires the user of the disposable vape to take it back to a collection point and littering is a significant problem.

Councils are not anti-vapes, which are shown to be less harmful than smoking and have a place as a tool to use in smoking cessation. The LGA strongly believes that vapes should only be used as an aid to quit smoking.

The LGA is also concerned about the impact vaping is having upon children and young people. It is worrying that more and more children – who have never smoked – are starting vaping. In May 2023, data from Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) showed there had been a 50 per cent rise in the proportion of children trying vaping in Great Britain in the last year. In 2021, of children who use e-cigarettes, 7.7 per cent were estimated to use disposable vapes. This increased to 52 per cent in 2022, rising again to 69 per cent in 2023.

Several European governments are actively considering how to tackle the proliferation of the disposable form of e-cigarettes on health, social, and environmental grounds.

France has stated it could prohibit the sale of disposable vapes by the end of 2023. A French bill last year called for a complete ban on the "manufacture, sale, distribution or free offer” of single-use e-cigarettes on the ground that they are "an aberration from the point of view of both public health and the environmental footprint”.

On 10 July, the Council of the European Union adopted a new law to strengthen sustainability rules for batteries and waste batteries. The new regulations will make replaceable or rechargeable batteries in all consumer products, including vapes mandatory by 2027. The new regulations will apply to all 27 EU states plus Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Liechtenstein from the end of 2026. Umberto Roccatti, president of Italy’s vaping industry association has already been reported saying “The funeral date for the product is effectively already set.”

This will be a considerable burden for producers and manufacturers of vapes, including on the performance, labelling, takeback and deposit-refund schemes, ease of battery removal by end-user, responsibility for disposal (or retrieval of unused energy) and the creation of a “battery passport” for the lifetime of every battery from production to disposal. As a result, the EU will become a less attractive market for international producers and may lead to stocks of non-compliant vapes being dumped on less-regulated markets such as the UK.

In June 2023, Ireland launched a public consultation considering future options for disposable vapes, including proposing an outright ban. A summary of responses can be found here. Nearly 85 per cent of respondents supported an outright ban on disposable vapes. A second consultation has been launched to look at what further measures could be introduced to decrease the appeal of nicotine inhaling products to young people and improve public health. This closes on 5 January 2024.

In Germany, the Bundesrat voted in March in favour of a ban on single-use e-cigarettes. The chamber of states approved a motion by Bavaria, calling on the Federal Government to advocate for an effective ban on the marketing of single-use e-cigarettes at national and EU level.

In the Netherlands, the production of flavoured disposable e-cigarettes and refill e-liquids was banned from 1 July 2023. A sell-out period applies until 1 January 2024 so shops can sell their stock.

Hungary has imposed a strict ban on the sale, ownership and use of Elf Bar brand disposable vape devices.

Across the EU certain countries have prohibited certain flavours from being used by their citizens. Some of these include but are not limited to Denmark, Estonia, Finland and Lithuania.

In 2023, Australia will ban the import and sale of all single-use, disposable vapes. The reforms aim to make it easier for smokers wanting to quit tobacco smoking to get a prescription from a licensed pharmacist and to understand the contents of the vaping products they then purchase.

Beginning in August 2023, New Zealand introduced a ban on disposable vapes. Some countries – including Cambodia, Jordan, Nepal, Panama, Thailand and Turkmenistan – have gone further and banned the use of e-cigarettes in their entirety.

The disposable vapes market has risen exponentially in recent years and is anticipated to continue growing.

Material Focus, a non-profit organisation which campaigns to increase recycling rates, calculated that UK adults buy around 30 million vapes a month, 360 million per year.

According to a BBC report, figures from research firm NielsenIQ suggest nearly 300m e-cigarettes (disposable and otherwise) sold in the UK over the last year.

Reuters reported that vaping products were the fastest growing category in UK grocery for the second year running in 2023, while sales of cigarettes, cigars and loose tobacco fell sharply, industry data showed.

Vaping products saw growth in UK sales of almost £900m in 2023, according to the data published on Saturday by market researcher NIQ and The Grocer.

The Lost Mary brand, owned by Chinese vaping firm Heaven Gifts, was the UK's fastest growing product with sales up by £310.6m compared to the previous year, the data showed.

National Trading Standards have provided the LGA with some overviews of enforcement activity on non-compliant vapes for the first two quarters of 2023-24.

Non-compliant vapes seized (inland) by LA TS: 2023-24 Q2: July to September 2023

Region	Vapes Seized	Seizure Events
CENTSA	23,594	65
EETSA	14,629	33
LTS	5,921	36
NETSA	11,383	48
TSEM	20,199	62
TSNW	113,462	268
TSSE	13,201	53
TSSW	18,149	48
YAHTS	39,454	122
England Totals	259,992	735

English Local Authority Trading Standards services seized 260k illegal vapes in Quarter 2 of 2023-24 (July – September 2023). This involved 735 separate seizure incidents at retailers and some wholesalers (but didn’t include interventions at ports).

In the North West region alone, 268 seizures took 113,462 illegal vapes away from the UK market.

Some decisions may not be made by the end of a quarter (in a large proportion of cases), so the true figures may be higher (and will be reviewed at year end).

The vast majority of seizures were from convenience stores or grocers.

Vape seizures (inland) by LA TS: comparison through time

Period	Vapes seized
2022-23	749,806
2022-23 Average number of vapes seized per quarter	187,452
Q1 2023-24	286,002
Q2 2023-24	259,992
2023-24 to date	545,994
2023-24 Average number of vapes seized per quarter	272,997

The rate at which England’s Local Authority Trading Standards (LA TS) services are seizing illegal vapes, in first half of 2023-24 is 46% higher than last year.

LA TS have seized 546k illegal vapes so far this year (2023-24), from mainly retailers from any inland premises (this does not include numbers of non-compliant vapes seized through intervention at ports).

Evidence suggests that people are most likely to dispose of a single use vape incorrectly. Research from Material Focus found that 5 million single use vapes are thrown away every week, totalling up to 21 million per month and 260 million per year.

Only 17 per cent of vapers recycle their vapes in the correct recycling bins, while a staggering 73 per cent discard them in the trash, and a negligible 1 per cent dispose of them by flushing them down the toilet. the research found.

The potential yearly cost of recycling all those vapes would be £200m, a cost which is not being met by producers, importers or retailers but by local taxpayers.

Disposable vapes contain copper wires and lithium batteries, which are both valuable materials. Each disposable vape contains roughly 0.15g of lithium.

Material Focus estimates that all the disposable vapes thrown away in a year contain enough lithium to provide batteries for 5000 electric cars.

The organisation Zero Waste Scotland estimated that somewhere between 721,000 and 2,787,800 units were littered in Scotland in 2022.

In July 2023, the insurer Zurich Municipal published research which found that two million single use vapes are discarded incorrectly in the UK every week, three per second – with 78 per cent ending up in general waste, rather than being recycled.

Single use vapes are fundamentally flawed in their design and are inherently unsustainable products. The problems with plastic items that escape into the environment as litter and plastic pollution are well documented. Scott Butler, the executive director at Material Focus, described single-use vapes as being “a strong contender for being the most environmentally wasteful, damaging and dangerous consumer product ever made.”

Disposable vapes should not be put in the council residual waste bin or street litter bins due to the risk of fires. Lithium-ion batteries can overheat rapidly and create an intense heat when damaged. The collection system for residual waste often includes crushing or compacting and this increases the risk of fires started by lithium-ion batteries. The end destinations for residual waste are landfill or incineration. Neither of these options is a safe option for treating the environmental harm of disposable vapes.

Kerbside collection of household recycling is also at risk from lithium-ion battery fires. The type of materials stored in recycling bins such as paper and plastic are fire sensitive and disposable vapes should not put in with them. Standard recycling sorting facilities do not have the equipment required to break a disposable vape into its component parts and deal with the hazardous elements, such as the residue of the vaping liquid and the unknown chemicals it contains.

Treatment and recycling of disposable vapes is technically possible but only at a specialised recycling facility. It is difficult to work out how many disposable vapes have been recycled through these routes, and data has not been routinely published. More evidence is needed on the effectiveness of recycling processes and whether the component parts of the disposable vape are reused or sent to incineration for energy recovery.

The vaping liquid can include a variety of different chemicals including nicotine and it is likely that some liquid residue will remain in the product after it has been discarded. Liquid nicotine is harmful to pets and wild animals if ingested.

The product may be manufactured with brominated flame retardants, and these chemicals are classed as persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and must be disposed of correctly to ensure that chemicals recognised as causing harm to human health and the environment do not enter the environment.

The vape industry are communicating to customers that disposable vapes are recyclable, but it is not clear that they need to be disposed of through separate recycling systems. This confuses the consumer, resulting in the contamination of kerb-side collections as people dispose of vapes in mixed recycling.

In addition, the very word ‘disposable’ to most people would mean ‘dispose’ in a normal bin, e.g. disposable gloves, disposable cups, disposable plates. As these products are convenient, cheap and labelled as disposable, many wouldn’t think about the process of discarding of them safely.

This all comes at a cost to the council taxpayer through fire damage to equipment and the specialist treatment needed to deal with hazardous waste. Zurich Municipal shows the number of bin lorries hit by blazes has increased by 62 per cent in the last two years.

Greater Manchester Combined Authority (the largest joint waste disposal authority in the country) has supported our call to ban disposable vapes. The authority is experiencing an increasing number of fires in its waste management trucks (with 37 fires reported to the end of June alone) due to lithium batteries. As a result, GMCA has had to spend an additional £100,000 on thermal cameras to monitor fires in its facilities.

Recent examples of fires to council bin lorries due to disposable vapes:

The options available for appropriate disposal of single use vapes are limited. Some retailers may provide a takeback service. There is no obligation to provide a takeback service unless the retailer sells over £100,000 of electrical items per year.

Vapes can be taken to a collection point for electrical items at a household waste and recycling centre. However, without a vehicle or suitable public transport options, these can be difficult to access, with some requiring appointments to be booked in advance. Residents in more rural areas and remote communities are less likely to have access to takeback schemes and live within proximity of household recycling centres. Some councils offer kerbside collection of small electrical items and may offer the option for vapes to be sent back through this route. Residents should check with their council to see if this service is provided locally.

Disposable vapes consist of various components that need to be properly disposed of as electrical waste. The majority of these products are not designed for easy disassembly and have to be manually pulled apart, making recycling challenging and inefficient. This short video from Recycle Your Electricals highlights the recycling process.

Not all components within a disposable vape are recyclable, meaning that even disposables taken to recycling centres will result in some waste being incinerated or taken to landfill. It is therefore misleading for producers to label these products as recyclable when it only applies to certain parts.

Their complex material composition will always mean they are logistically difficult, labour intensive and expensive to recycle, meaning that the precious metals they contain will continue to go to waste. This includes lithium and copper, which are critical materials to support our green transition.

The organisation Material Focus has developed a briefing for retailers and producers on how vapes are adding to the e-waste problem, and how vape producers and sellers can comply with their legal environmental obligations.

New research from UCL and the University of Oxford, supported by The Faraday Institution has found that while the lithium-ion batteries in disposable vapes are discarded after a single use, they can continue to perform at high capacity for hundreds of cycles. Despite being sold as disposable, their research found that the lithium-ion batteries stored within them are capable of being charged and discharged over 450 times. This highlights the huge waste of limited resources caused by disposable vapes.

The Independent newspaper has recently published a video on YouTube detailing the true cost of disposable vapes, highlighting how few are recycled and the costs incurred by councils.

The simple answer is, we just don’t know.

Almost everything is ‘recyclable’ if you’re willing to spend huge amounts of money separating products into their component materials and putting them thorough complicated and expensive reprocessing. If something is labelled as recyclable, it doesn't necessarily mean that it actually will be recycled; it requires human effort and participation. Many rural areas, small towns, and communities do not have takeback or household recycling centres. Some individuals will choose not to recycle at all for a variety of reasons.

For example, takeaway coffee cups are recyclable, but need to be taken to your council’s local household recycling centre (if they provide this service) or to a specific coffee cup disposal scheme (e.g. some coffee shop chains have introduced on-site cup recycling collection points). In the UK, 2.5 billion coffee cups are used and discarded annually. Only 0.25 percent of these cups, or less than 1 in 400, are recycled whilst the rest ends up in landfill.

The limited number of disposable vapes self-reported to be recycled by the vape industry remain pitifully low. For example, a recycling scheme introduced by disposable vape manufacturer Riot Labs in 800 vape shops across the UK had less than a 1 per cent take-back rate.

It is only reasonable for disposable vape retailers and recycling companies now setting up recycling operations to be clear about their targets and data they are collecting. Without this transparency, how are we to know if it is successful or not?

Without transparent data on the number of vapes being sold, returned, and recycled, the industry can tell us what they like about these schemes which can be misleading.

In addition, a House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee Report (November 2022) highlighted that the volatile prices of virgin (new) and recycled plastics means that it is often cheaper for producers to buy virgin plastics rather than recycled plastics, making revenues for recycled plastic difficult to predict.

Vapes come under the WEEE producer responsibility scheme for electrical items. Vapes are classified with toys and other battery-operated items (specifically category 7 toys, leisure and sports equipment) and the producer fee does not reflect the true cost of recycling and disposal.

The LGA is concerned by the low level of compliance by the producers of disposable vapes. Recent research has found that more than 90% of smaller UK vape and vape juice producers are not registered under waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) regulations. The Environment Agency is responsible for taking enforcement action against producers who fail to register for the scheme.

Businesses that do register are paying a fraction of the cost of dealing with disposable vapes. If retailers sell less than £100,000 of electrical and electronic items per year, they are not required to provide takeback facilities on their own premises. Instead they can discharge their duty by paying money to the distributor takeback scheme. This funds councils to provide collection points for electrical and electronic items at household waste and recycling centres.

Through the Environmental Protection Act 1990, the Government has the power to ban ‘injurious substances’ that damage the environment or harm human health. A ban on disposable vapes can therefore be achieved using these powers, as was the case with bans on plastic straws and other single-use items.

Disposable vapes are inherently unsustainable products, when you objectively weigh up every single environmental and public health consequence, it is clear a ban is what is needed.

The Government has no current plans to apply an excise duty to non-tobacco nicotine or vaping products. We would be supportive of the introduction of an excise duty on vapes but only if the proceeds were specifically ringfenced for environmental, public health and enforcement purposes. Even if a tax were introduced, this would not solve the other major issues with disposable vapes, such as their environmental impact, use by children and young people and limited enforcement efforts.

Increased enforcement and registration of retailers will not change consumer behaviour in discarding used vapes, particularly as sales of vapes are now so widespread (e.g. no longer confined to just vape shops, disposables can be sold by barber shops, sweet shops and other locations).

It has been widely reported that a ban on disposable vapes may have unintended consequences, such as an increase in the illicit market. Big Tobacco companies regularly use these arguments to ascertain that increases in tobacco control policy will lead to increasing in smuggling, claiming higher taxes encourage more people to buy cigarettes illegally, for example, or that plain packaging makes it easier for counterfeiters to copy big brands.

We accept the prohibition of goods is unlikely to solve the problem, however, there are alternatives, and we are not suggesting a complete ban on vapes, we remain committed to refillable vapes albeit with tighter conditions on their sale, marketing and availability to children. Reusable, rechargeable vapes are already a good alternative. By banning disposable vapes we can shift from our throwaway culture to one of reuse.

From January 2024 with a sell-out period to allow for shops to sell their stock. Urgent action is required to prevent further damage to council waste equipment and other detrimental impacts on the environment.

Rather than taking time to slowly develop more complex solutions, a ban would signal the Government’s commitment to the urgency of tackling this issue.

Public opinion on this issue is clear, as evidenced by a recent YouGov poll which found that 77 per cent of individuals would support a ban on disposable vapes.

Disposable vapes were added to 'do not bring' list at Glastonbury Festival. Organisers of the festival urged attendees not to bring single-use e-cigarettes to the event siting environmental concerns.

Reading and Leeds Festivals have also asked attendees to not bring disposable vapes on site in 2023.

There has been a particularly worrying rise in the number of children using vapes, with companies clearly marketing these products at children using colours, flavours and cheap disposable options.

The current marketing tactics, easy access to disposable vapes and risk of nicotine addiction are factors driving the increasing use of vapes by young people. In the absence of conclusive evidence that vaping is safe, as opposed to safer than tobacco, our policy recommendations aim to prevent youth uptake of vaping.

An NHS Digital report published in September 2022 found that more than one in five (22 per cent) of 11-15 year olds had reported to have used vapes in 2021 in England. Amongst 11–15-year-olds in the UK, 4.0 per cent currently use vapes, compared to 14.1 per cent of 16–17-year-olds and 20.2 per cent of 18-year-olds in 2022. This has doubled across all age groups since 2021, which was reported to be 2.2 per cent, 5.9 per cent and 9.6 per cent respectively.

A 2023 survey from ASH found that the proportion of 11–17-year-olds in the UK who stated they were current users more than doubled from 3.3 per cent in 2021 to 7.6 per cent in 2023, while those trying vaping once or twice increased by 50 per cent compared to 2022.

A Scottish study from 2022 found that children aged 11–16 years described disposable e-cigarettes as ‘cool’, ‘fashionable’ and enticing, and viewed these products as a modern lifestyle ‘accessory’, whereas reusable vapes were considered a more of an ‘adult’ product.

A 2022 survey by the Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI) found 60 per cent of local Trading Standards services are concerned about high street shops selling illicit vapes or vaping products to children.

Councils and their Trading Standards teams are concerned about retailers selling disposable vapes to children. A recent example comes from Portsmouth Trading Standards investigators who sent a 15-year-old into shops to see if they could buy disposable vapes; two retailers were witnessed selling the products. Meanwhile, about 6,500 illegal disposable vapes (worth around £83,000) were seized in trading standards operations backed by police.

Many illegal disposable vapes seized by Trading Standards teams are prohibited because they break regulations on labelling and ingredients. By law, a vape can only hold 2ml of liquid – approximately 600 puffs. Some seized products have enough liquid for over 12,000 puffs, others contain illegally high levels of nicotine.

There appears to be no clear evidence to support claims that a black market would develop, and that a ban would flood the market with illicit and unregulated vapes.

A black market already exists for disposable vapes, with millions of illegal items flooding into the UK each year. In 2022, the North East Trading Standards Association removed thousands of non-compliant vaping products from sale in the region. A total of 1.4 tonnes of illegal disposable vaping products seized from retailers during operations in a six-month period were sent for destruction. A large quantity of the disposable vapes seized were not authorised for sale in the UK.

In November 2022, London Trading Standards reported that over a million disposable vaping devices were stopped from entering UK markets at Heathrow Airport, whilst Channel ports are reporting a ‘dramatic rise’ in the number of counterfeit vapes seized. At the port of Dover, 13,000 devices with nine times the legal amount of nicotine liquid was seized in a week. There is already a thriving black market in existence, flooded with unregulated and potentially harmful products.

In Kent, between 2021 and 2023, almost 400,000 illegal vapes were seized in the county, with the majority picked up at the Port of Dover, Europe's busiest ferry port. The data - obtained by retailer Vape Club under Freedom of Information legislation - suggests the interception of illegal products nationally in the first four months of 2023 was seven times higher than the entirety of 2021. Kent is in the top five areas in the UK for the seizures since 2021 - with 382,573 seized - making the county a "hub for counterfeit vape imports", the retailer said. They added between 2017 and 2023, authorities seized an illegal vape from sea and airports every minute - a rate five times lower in local authorities with no ports.

Between September and mid-November 2023, Hampshire County Council’s Trading Standards team seized more than 10,500 illicit vapes, often with excessive liquid content, which had a total value of £153,674.

In September 2023, Trading Standards officers from Stockport Council seized £80,000 of illegal single use vapes and six arrests were made during a joint operation with Greater Manchester Police.

The disposable vape sector are using similar arguments used by the tobacco industry. We don’t remember a single tobacco control measure (point of sale display, vending machine ban, increasing the age of sale to eighteen, standard packaging, ban on menthol flavoured cigarettes) where the tobacco industry didn’t say that it would lead to an increase in illicit trade.

Illicit activity is a criminal activity. Criminals will trade whatever brings most profit and least penalty (drugs, tobacco, disposable vapes) and the key to illicit is strengthened enforcement.

Disposable vapes are not the only route to quitting smoking. Other methods still exist such as reusable vapes and other stop smoking aids (e.g. nicotine replacement therapies). Any quit is more likely to succeed with advice. We should be promoting stop smoking support and person-centred cessation, encouraging the most effective and least harmful methods.

If the EU becomes a less attractive market for international producers it may lead to stocks of non-compliant vapes being dumped on less-regulated markets, e.g. the UK.

We accept the prohibition of goods, in itself, is unlikely to solve the problem, however, there are alternatives, and we are not suggesting a complete ban on vapes, we remain committed to refillable vapes albeit with tighter conditions on their sale, marketing and availability. To curb the illicit disposable vape trade, it is essential to secure comprehensive strategies for tackling criminal activities.

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Councils call for ban of disposable vapes