More than 25,000 vapes are removed every month in Aberdeenshire, UK. Scotland is expected to implement a ban in 2025 when the UK will lose more than 25,000 vapes.
According to a report by Aberdeenshire County Council on October 15, about 25,000 vapes are removed from street and road drainage facilities every month.
Aberdeenshire County Council provides around 250 tonnes of street and channel cleaning waste to waste management specialist Levenseat each month. The material is cleaned and divided into crushed stone, soil, sand, and organic matter for composting to be reused.
In a recent experiment by Levenseat, around 5,000 vapes were separated from 50 tonnes of cleaning and canal waste in Aberdeenshire using a vortex separator.
In the UK, Veolia has launched the first nationwide vape recycling service and recycles 94% of the material.
Alan Turner MP, Chairman of the House Infrastructure Services Committee (ISC), said:
- “The rapid growth of single-use vapes is shocking. When we think about all the precious materials that go into making them, they’re just being dumped on our streets, which is undoubtedly a real e-waste.”
Under proposed legislation published on February 23, 2024, a single-use vape ban in Scotland would come into effect on April 1, 2025, with Aberdeenshire County Council backing it as early as June 2023. A new study by Material Focus found that the UK stands to lose more than 250 million vapes as the ban approaches. Annual sales of single-use vapes in the UK are around 360 million, of which more than 5 million are lost each week, equivalent to eight per second.
