The UK Vaping Industry Association (VIA) is launching a new web-based information hub, as well as a special Sustainable Vaping Week campaign during October.
It comes after a recent report from Material Focus highlighted that some 5 million single use vapes are thrown away each week.
Material Focus executive director Scott Butler said: “Single-use vapes are a strong contender for being the most environmentally wasteful, damaging and dangerous consumer product ever made.”
The UKVIA resource hub and campaign will provide vapers with information about locations where they can dispose of their vapes and educational resources for clubs and pubs to educate their customers about recycling single use vapes.
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Director General of the UK Vaping Industry Association John Dunne said: “There have been calls for the banning of single use vapes in part due to their environmental impact.”
“However, a ban is not the answer – firstly disposable vapes are proven to be hugely effective in getting smokers to switch their habits to considerably less harmful vapes, due to their ease of use, convenience and low entry price points”.
“They are the main reason why smoking is currently at record low levels across the UK. In addition, through the collective efforts of a range of stakeholders we can reverse the current impact of the environment arising from vapers throwing them away.”
He added that the proposed initiatives “will play a key role in this process by educating vapers about how they can play a critical role in being environmentally considerate when disposing of their vapes.”
“They will also give much needed guidance to the vaping industry and other sectors, such as hospitality and general retail, about what they need to be doing to support the collection of vape waste, thereby enabling significantly higher recycling rates than what we are currently seeing for these devices”.
