Dear editor,
In January I was helping to plant a new Miyawaki forest just south of the river in Bedford. While digging through the compost supplied by the council I found a disposable vape unit.
Read: Longholme Way to be site of Borough’s first volunteer-planted ‘mini forest’ project
There we were, planting a new mini eco-system in love and hope, and deep in the nutritious soil was the Anthropocene writ large – a £5 plastic vape unit made of plastic, rubber, metal and lithium just discarded and set to rot away for 1000s of years in a new forest.
Most users are unaware that vapes should not be put in the bin. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that a large number of users don’t even bother correctly disposing of these products at all.
Within the area of convenience stores and garages, you often see the cardboard packaging, plastic sheaths and rubber stoppers discarded and littering the area, as well as an increasing number of vape units by the road and in gutters throughout the town.
According to research, an estimated 1.3 million disposable vapes are thrown away every week, which is the equivalent of 10 tonnes of lithium a year, enough for 1,200 electric vehicles. We are throwing away some of the most precious materials on the planet.
Placing them in household waste or recycling is hazardous to the ecosystem, as well as being a fire risk in landfills, with an estimated 710 fires in the UK alone. They must be treated as Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) at a recycling centre.
Harmful to children
Disposable vapes come in a range of different flavours and bright colours which increases the appeal to children.
I am aware of convenience stores in Bedford where the owners admit that the sales of sweets are falling off a cliff because children are saving up their pocket money for disposable vapes. Even parents are coming in and buying vapes for their children.
My children also tell me that dozens of teenage friends at their school vape at parties – it’s the latest fad. Whilst deemed safer than tobacco (the NHS are using vapes to get smokers off tobacco) disposable vapes use nicotine salts.
Nicotine is horrendously addictive, but nicotine salts have added benzoic acid which can cause an increased risk of respiratory disease in young lungs.
What should we do? Should we ban them? Should we demand that vendors and manufacturers do more to encourage the correct recycling of these materials?
I posed these questions to Bedford council but, whilst Cllr Royden shares my concerns, it seems their hands are tied and this requires action at a national level.
Paul Edmonds,
Bedford
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