Single-use, disposable vapes banned in Australia

In a win for public health and the environment, the Australian federal government has just banned the importation of non-prescription vaping products. All single-use, disposable vapes will also be banned – which will drastically reduce single-use vape waste. But hang on – hasn’t the importation of vaping products always been banned? Well, yes – but only those vapes containing nicotine. This meant that  importers were removing nicotine from the ingredient list and selling “nicotine-free” products with high levels of nicotine in them.

Now, all non-prescription vapes will be banned, including those that do not contain nicotine.

The crack-down is largely in response to the extraordinarily high uptake of vaping among young people and children.

With cartoonish labels and flavours like bubble-gum and grape, the mostly single-use products have been marketed and targeted specifically for under 18-year-olds, where addiction is now rife.

A study conducted by the Cancer Council NSW found that 32% of young people had tried vaping, up from 15% three years earlier. Alongside nicotine, the products can contain hundreds of other harmful ingredients such as acetone (found in nail polish remover) and pulegone (found in insecticide).

Negative health impacts associated with addiction and poisoning are apparent, but what about the negative impacts for earth?

Vape waste is a huge environmental threat.

Vapes contain various hazardous components, including a lithium battery, and toxic liquid, not to mention a pod component made of single-use plastic.

Because of the mixed nature of the product, the issue of safe disposal remains an enormous challenge.

Most councils in Australia classify vapes as hazardous waste, and for good reason: when discarded in landfill or littered, heavy metals plus toxic juice leach into the environment.

But vapes are an environmental triple-threat, because they contain three forms of waste in one: plastic waste, in the device body and pod, electronic waste in the form of lithium-ion batteries and a heating element, and hazardous waste because of the heavy metals in the vape and the nicotine in the e-juice.

They’re near impossible to recycle, and many vape products and accessories are being thrown away in the garbage, or worse – dumped as litter.

As vape batteries degrade, lead, cobalt and other harmful substances work their way into the environment where they can accumulate in animals, soil, and waterways, and even contaminate drinking water and foods posing downstream risks to human health and entire ecosystems.

In Western Australia, the only licensed vape disposal service – Perth Chemical Specialists – is run by chemical engineer Reece Russell. In an interview with ABC News, Russell said that his disposal service involves separating each individual component of the vape before sending them off to major waste facilities. Separating the components is the only safe way to dispose of vapes, but Russell does not advise us to pull them apart ourselves – it’s easy to start a fire if the battery is short-circuited.

Lithium batteries can also cause a fire when disposed of incorrectly in landfill.

Russell’s main client is high schools, who typically hand over 50-100 confiscated vaping devices at a time.  But with schools fronting the cost of up to $10 per item to recycle, Russell admits it’s not an ideal solution. He is currently working with local governments to try and find other options.

“We need a central deposit point for the waste. People need somewhere where they can take them where we can dispose of them correctly. “Once we have those larger numbers, the cost of disposal will come down.”

Shannon Mead, chief executive of environmental group No More Butts, has advocated for a regulated national vape recycling program, saying: “A scheme would also enable better transparency of importation data and retail sales data, which will assist in assessing the true impact of this trend.”

In NSW, City of Sydney Council is one council which has been recycling vapes through their doorstep recycling service.

The service processes tricky-to-recycle items including clothes, small electronics, polystyrene and vapes. It’s a free service for people who live in the City of Sydney area and can be booked online. SCRgroup is contracted by the City of Sydney to run the collection service, which is a clear outlier – due to the tricky nature of the product, there are few other council-led recycling options.

Willoughby Council suggests removing the battery from vapes and recycling them through a community recycling centre or through B-Cycle, the national accredited Battery Stewardship Scheme, which accepts vape batteries alongside household and rechargeable batteries. However, again – this is a far from an ideal solution and unadvisable; lithium batteries, when punctured, can very easily cause a chemical fire.

Ominously, doing a quick search for “vapes” in the Recycle Mate app across various councils throughout Australia repeatedly gives the same answer: “Please be sure to always remove batteries from this item before disposal. Please safely dispose of old batteries at your nearest collection point. Alternative Disposal Locations are largely unavailable for this item.”

Across the waste sector, it is widely agreed that importing and selling a “disposable product” without any clear disposal or reprocessing pathway is irresponsible and problematic for the entire waste industry, with WA Local Government Association president Karen Chappel saying that vape importers, producers or distributors of vapes should foot the bill for recycling and disposal, taking the load off local governments and councils.

Pip Kiernan, Chair of Clean Up Australia agrees; saying “There is an urgent, overdue need for standardised processes for the disposal of e-cigarette devices, refills and e-liquids. There is currently no federal or state legislation governing end-of-life disposal for e-cigarettes. We need to set clear standards on environmentally responsible e-cigarette waste disposal and hold the industry accountable for adhering to them.

“The problem of e-cigarette waste is emblematic of a larger problem – companies are free to introduce new products into the market with no regard for the safe disposal of their component parts when their useful life comes to an end. We need good product stewardship to close the loop on e-cigarettes and ensure manufacturers take responsibility for the entire lifecycle of their products, including recycling and end-of-life disposal."

Now that disposable vape products are banned, the issue of vape disposal may slightly decrease, but Australia will still need a clear recycling system for those products approved via prescription. There are also millions of used disposable vapes still in circulation which will need to be safely recycled.

By Lucia Moon