Dr Will Proud, a Senior Consultant who worked on Eunomia’s influential 2023 study of the environmental impacts of single-use vapes, shares his views on the new ban in the UK – and how policy needs to go further still.
New bans now in force
A suite of laws that came into effect yesterday are banning the sale and supply of single-use vapes in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales. These vapes, which come with a built-in battery and pre-filled with e-liquid, are cheap to buy and designed to be disposable. They have risen steeply in popularity over the last decade and more.
From 2012 to 2023, the number of vape users shot up by more than 400%, to equal 9.1% of the UK’s population. The market for single-use vapes has also been rapidly growing, with an annual turnover of around £1 billion in 2021 and an estimated 7.7 million purchased every week, from both legal and illegal vendors.
Impact assessments for both the English and Scottish legislation banning single-use vapes cite Eunomia’s research on their environmental impacts as part of the evidence base.
The environmental case for the bans
For our study, commissioned by Defra, we began by reviewing the available evidence and talking to stakeholders, to assess trends in vape manufacturing and the import and export markets. We analysed the lifecycle of single-use vapes, investigating the materials they and their packaging contain, and their treatment and disposal routes. We then modelled the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and sought qualitative information on other likely environmental impacts.
While single-use vapes can be recycled, in practice only 1% actually are. Recycling them takes extra effort – people must bring them to a local recycling centre or put them in special bins at vape or electronic shops – and gives recyclers little financial return. Because vapes are so small, they must be manually dismantled to recover their plastic and steel components, and their lithium-ion battery, which contains valuable rare earth metals. The recycling process costs between 40 pence and £1 per vape, so there is little financial incentive to do it. As a result, most single-use vapes are thrown away in residual waste bins and end up being incinerated or tossed into landfill. Many are littered.
Our modelling indicated that, in 2023, GHG emissions from the lifecycle of single-use vapes placed on the market in the UK amounted to just over 80,000 tonnes. Raw material extraction accounted for about 57% of that, manufacturing about 26%, and incineration about 2%. Waste fires, which can ignite when lithium-ion batteries are damaged in landfill, released approximately 15% of total GHGs, and had detrimental effects on air quality.
Vapes that are tossed away, rather than being put into waste bins, create a substantial litter problem; road sweeping vehicles typically pick up 100-150 vapes in an average 8-hour shift.[1] According to the limited research so far conducted on the impacts of this, littered vapes may be introducing a range of toxic substances into our environment as they degrade: microplastics from the casing; nicotine salts from e-liquid; and cobalt, copper, and nickel from the batteries. These may be harming local ecosystems and wildlife, but more research is needed to help us understand these possible effects.
Without policy interventions such as bans to curb the use of single-use vapes, the problem would have continued to grow. In 2023, over 360 million single-use vapes were placed on the UK market. Our modelling showed that this would have risen to 1,033 million a year by 2030 in the absence of a ban. On top of the environmental damage, this would have represented a huge loss in terms of material value – roughly equivalent to the lithium in 22,000 car batteries.
What the future could hold
Other countries are moving in the same direction as the UK. Belgium banned the sale of single-use vapes at the start of 2025, for example, and both Ireland and Germany are moving towards a ban. New Zealand and Australia already have bans in place. A number of countries, including Singapore, Brazil, Mexico, and India, outlaw the import, sale, and in some cases the use of all types of vape.
Stopping the sale and supply of single-use vapes is a good first step towards reducing their environmental impacts. However, it may not go far enough to make a real difference.
Enforcing the bans may prove challenging, given the size and scale of the UK’s illegal market for single-use vapes. Our study found it is at least as large as the legal market and, according to Trading Standards, 99% of seized illegal vapes are the single-use variety. The UK bans forbid only their sale. Importing them is still legal, so problems gathering accurate trade data and controlling imports mean they could still be sold.
Although the bans should mean that fewer vapes enter the waste stream, even legally sold non-disposable vapes have the potential to cause environmental harm if they are littered, incinerated, or sent to landfill – especially in the absence of any commercial incentive to recycle them.
To minimise environmental harm, the UK needs policy that goes beyond the newly minted bans to regulate the market and support the development of technologies that make vape battery recycling a viable option. Developing the ability and infrastructure to recover high-value metals at scale could make a real difference to the number of vapes that end up in waste streams, with all the adverse environmental impacts that go with them.
[1] Tapper, J 13.5.2023 ‘Single-use vapes sparking surge in fires at UK waste plants’, The Observer. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/may/13/single-use-vapes-sparking-surge-in-fires-at-uk-waste-plants
