00:00 Disposable vapes first hit the UK market in 2005.
00:04 Since then, they've exploded in popularity,
00:07 with around 4 million people vaping in the UK.
00:10 But there's a hidden cost.
00:13 Around eight single-use vapes are thrown away
00:15 every second in the UK,
00:17 leaving a growing mountain of plastic waste
00:19 and, crucially, lithium batteries in their wake.
00:22 With around 80% of people who use vapes
00:25 saying that they don't dispose of them correctly,
00:27 it spells disaster for the environment
00:29 and for local councils.
00:31 Here is the true cost of disposable vapes.
00:36 When you're done with a disposable vape,
00:37 you're meant to take it to a proper recycling facility
00:40 like this, where it'll then be sent off and taken apart
00:43 so the different materials inside can be recycled properly.
00:47 But how often are people actually doing this?
00:49 -We do know that 120,000 a month in North London alone
00:55 are being used,
00:58 and at least half of those are being thrown on our streets
01:01 or just simply put in bins.
01:02 That's a huge amount of precious materials
01:05 that can be used for other uses.
01:08 -Inside every vape is a lithium battery.
01:11 Lithium is a finite resource
01:12 that comes with an energy-intensive mining process.
01:15 If you were to take all the lithium
01:17 being thrown away every year inside disposable vapes,
01:20 it would add up to around 10 tons
01:22 being sent to landfill or incinerators.
01:24 That's enough to make batteries for 1,200 electric cars.
01:28 It's expensive, but recycling centers
01:30 are beginning to recapture some of those precious metals.
01:34 I'm at the Sweep Kusakowski Recycling Centre in Kent,
01:37 and as you can see behind me,
01:38 there is just a mountain of electronic waste.
01:41 This is only a small percentage
01:43 of the amount we get through in the UK.
01:44 The rest will get sent to landfill or incinerated.
01:47 So if, when you're done with your single-use vape
01:49 and you recycle it properly, this is where it might end up.
01:54 Justin, can you tell me a bit about where we are
01:56 and what sort of stuff gets sent here?
01:58 So we're in City Mall in Kent.
02:00 We're Sweep Kusakowski.
02:01 We're a waste electronics recycler.
02:04 So everything you're gonna see around us
02:05 is kettles, toasters, computers,
02:07 microwaves, vacuum cleaners.
02:09 All those gadgets that we've got around our home
02:11 come to us for recycling.
02:13 This is about 1,000 vapes.
02:15 It's about a week's worth of deliveries for us
02:17 when it comes into all the other electronics we're recycling.
02:20 So quite a small amount, really,
02:22 compared to the amount that are actually being thrown away.
02:25 How many are being thrown away every week?
02:27 Well, the latest numbers are saying 5 million a week
02:31 are being thrown away in the UK.
02:33 Those are ending up, certainly not with us,
02:36 they're ending up in the rubbish collections,
02:39 there's road sweepings,
02:42 in with our cans and bottles type of recycling waste.
02:45 So they really are popping up all over the place.
02:47 Should we take a look at them?
02:48 Sure.
02:49 Right.
02:51 (vapour hissing)
02:53 Gosh, so that's a thousand, roughly.
02:59 Yeah, about a thousand vapes.
03:01 And you've got these in the last week?
03:03 That's right.
03:03 Would you be able to show us what's inside a vape
03:06 so we can get a better idea of how they're recycled?
03:08 Yeah, of course.
03:09 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
03:10 I can open up one for you and show you.
03:12 So that's the lithium battery that powers the vape,
03:19 but also causes so many problems
03:21 because it is prone to catching fire.
03:23 And that happens quite often?
03:25 Can do, yes.
03:26 And this is the cartridge section.
03:28 There's a little bit still left in there
03:29 just where the tube's been squeezed.
03:31 So what happens to the lithium battery
03:34 once these are taken apart?
03:35 So when we add them, we're able to separate the battery
03:38 and the battery can go back round again
03:39 and get recycled ones.
03:41 Likewise, the tube and the plastic.
03:44 So the real key is actually capturing them as a waste stream
03:48 and we're just not when it goes dead.
03:51 This is expensive for councils
03:53 because vapes are sold as a single unit
03:55 that then need to be individually taken apart by hand.
03:58 The lithium batteries inside vapes
04:01 mean that they fall under government regulation
04:03 for waste from electrical and electronic equipment.
04:06 Vape manufacturers should be covering
04:08 the cost of collection and recycling,
04:10 but over 90% of vape producers in the UK
04:14 are failing to meet environmental regulations.
04:18 The single-use vape has been on the UK market
04:21 for three and a bit years.
04:22 And in that time, hardly any producer or any retailer
04:25 was meeting any of their obligations.
04:27 They basically went undercover,
04:29 yet have grown to be a massive market.
04:31 And now we think at least 5 million of them
04:33 are being thrown away every week instead of being recycled.
04:36 And that's because retailers who had an obligation
04:38 to offer drop-off points for them in store,
04:41 and the producers and importers who had a responsibility
04:44 for paying for the recycling
04:45 have been avoiding that responsibility
04:47 whilst making massive profits as well.
04:49 So it's the profit that they've been making
04:52 essentially has been at a cost to the public purse
04:55 and avoiding all of the environmental and fire safety issues
05:00 that are being caused by them.
05:01 When the regulations were written,
05:03 people were talking about fridge mountains.
05:05 They were worried about moving from cathode ray tube
05:08 television through to flat panels.
05:09 They didn't envisage that we would have a piece of fast tech
05:14 like a vape that would be sold in hundreds of millions
05:16 and we'd have hundreds of millions of lithium ion batteries
05:19 out there and in the wrong place.
05:21 So basically the regulations have not been able
05:23 to adapt quickly enough to them.
05:26 We reached out to some of the big manufacturers
05:28 of single-use vapes to find out
05:30 how they're meeting their legal obligation
05:31 to cover recycling and collection costs.
05:34 Local councils are already cash-strapped
05:37 and the cost of properly disposing of vapes
05:39 is stretching already tight budgets.
05:41 (soft music)
05:44 (soft music)
05:46 (soft music)
05:48 [MUSIC PLAYING]
05:52 [BLANK_AUDIO]
Comments