Monday June 1st 2026
Disposable vapes
Written by Glasgow View Reporter, Liam Eunson
One year on since the Scotland-wide single-use vape ban came into force, environmental and health organisations are calling for further action to protect people and our environment.
Since the ban, a positive decrease in littered vapes has been recorded across Scotland, with unpublished data from Keep Scotland Beautiful audits highlighting a strong decline. Alongside this data in Scotland, a decrease of 9% has been recorded across the UK.
Community-led volunteer group, Dalkeith Guerilla Gardeners, highlighted this decrease, explaining to the Midlothian View that since the ban they have noticed less littered vapes whilst litter picking.
Ken Cramon from the Guerilla Gardeners explained:
“Whilst the general levels of litter is as bad as ever, the good news is that in the last few months we have hardly found any disposable vapes.
“It may even be that the ones we have found are old and have only been found recently. Hopefully disposable vapes are now history.”
Scotland, alongside the rest of the UK, banned disposable vapes with the aim to eliminate a complex waste stream as discarded disposable vapes can hugely damage the environment and wildlife, alongside protecting public health particularly amongst younger people.
While a positive decrease in littered vapes has been recorded there is little data available to identify whether the ban has helped reduce youth vaping.
The ongoing challenges of disposing of vapes safely, capturing precious resources via recycling, alongside tackling the ever present and harmful issue of smoking-related litter remains.
The UK Governments Environmental Blog Team posted on a blog post prior to the ban explaining:“Say one disposable vape promises about 600 puffs – its plastic casing will easily last for 600 years buried in the earth”.
Even when recycled, it is a difficult job disposing of the vapes. Due to containing many chemical components and not being designed to take apart, they usually have to be dissembled by hand at recycling centres which makes for a slow and difficult process that made it hard for the centres to keep up with the amount of vapes that they were receiving.
Climate Action Secretary Gillian Martin explained: “Before taking action on disposable vapes, it was estimated that over half of disposable vapes were incorrectly disposed of each year in Scotland – creating a fire risk and littering our beautiful environment.
“These findings are a welcome demonstration of the success the single-use vape ban has had in its first year in tackling the threat they pose to our environment as well as to our public health.”
Environmental charity Keep Scotland Beautiful, the Marine Conservation Society and health charity ASH Scotland, alongside environmental scientist and campaigner Laura Anderson (Young), first liaised with Scottish Ministers to call for a ban on the sale of single-use vapes in 2022 after highlighting how vapes undermine the principles of a circular economy, cause harm to Scotland’s environment and damage people’s health.
Now a year-on from the ban the coalition is calling for further action, to build on the momentum and take further steps to address smoking-related litter and health impacts in children and young people, including:
– Vapes, nicotine pouches and cigarette filters being brought into existing producer responsibility schemes. (Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging (pEPR)).
– Increasing awareness and tightening up the enforcement of existing disposal and recycling legislation for producers, distributors and retailers of vapes.
– Requiring businesses reporting on the number of vapes that are returned for recycling.
– Banning the sale and manufacture of single-use cigarette filters which offer no health benefits and exacerbate environmental damage.
– Routinely publish robust data on children in Scotland’s use of tobacco and vapes.
Laura Anderson, Environmental Scientist and Campaigner, catapulted the issue of single use vapes to the forefront of public awareness. She said: “Introducing the ban on disposable vapes was an important step forward, and it is encouraging to see reductions in vape litter across Scotland and the wider UK. But one year on, many of the wider environmental and safety concerns still remain unresolved.
“Vapes continue to pose a major fire risk because of the lithium-ion batteries they contain, with thousands of fires linked to these products in bins, bin lorries and waste sites in recent years. At the same time, valuable materials inside these devices are still too often being lost instead of properly recovered and recycled.
“We now need stronger action to make reuse and responsible recycling the norm, while holding producers and retailers more accountable for the products they put on the market. This should be a turning point towards a more circular economy that reduces waste, protects communities and keeps valuable resources in use for longer.”
Barry Fisher, Chief Executive of Keep Scotland Beautiful, added: “It is clear that the ban on selling single-use vapes has raised the profile of how many of these electronic items were littered, reduced that number slightly and highlighted the need for better recycling and disposal options, but we still have a long way to go to tackle smoking-related litter in Scotland. Our auditors counted almost 20,000 cigarette filters (butts) when surveying across Scotland last year, and so we desperately need to look wider than the single-use vape ban and introduce a producer pays model (pEPR) for vapes and cigarette filters.”
Sheila Duffy, Chief Executive of ASH Scotland, said: “Scotland’s UK-leading ban of disposable vapes was a significant public health measure and we call on the Scottish Government, as a matter of urgency, to publish more up-to-date national data about young people’s use of tobacco and recreational nicotine products so that the extent to which the ban has impacted on reducing youth vaping becomes clear. Going forward, ASH Scotland also calls on the government to support a ban on cigarette filters as they offer no health benefits, mislead people who smoke into considering cigarettes to be safer and discourage quit smoking attempts.”
“The ban on single-use vapes was a fantastic win for our volunteers and Youth Ocean Network members who have been working tirelessly to raise awareness of the issue of littered vapes. Last year, vapes were recorded and collected on 77% of our Source to Sea inland litter picks – a decrease of 9% compared to the previous year – we hope to see this trend continue. Littered vapes can leak harmful chemicals and microplastics into the environment which can find their way into our seas and pose a real risk to marine life which is why we need further action.”
It has been explained that the coalition will continue to work collaboratively to tackle vapes and smoking related litter and build on its commitment to a cleaner, healthier Scotland.
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