How Can You Dispose of Disposable Vapes?

If you’re wondering what to do with your empty disposable vape in the UK, there is a lot of conflicting information. Some say you can recycle your disposable vapes. Others say you can bury them in the ground and a tree full of all the flavours of vapes in the world will sprout… That last one is a joke by the way.

Anyways, jokes aside, what can you do with your disposable vape when it’s finished?

Can you recycle disposable vapes?

At the moment in the UK, we don’t have the facilities to recycle disposable vapes. Because all of the components of disposable vapes are hard to separate, recycling centres don’t have the ability to take them apart and reclaim the metals and other elements in these single use vapes.

Short answer, no. You can’t put them in your recycling bin.

BUT… Some advice mentions taking out the battery, if you can, and putting it into the battery recycling points at your local supermarket or tip.

If you want to recycle your disposable vapes then you will need to take them apart responsibly and carefully. Be aware that an ecigarette is made up of various parts and you should be very careful if you want to remove bits to recycle.

What can you do with empty disposable vapes?

So if you can’t recycle a disposable vape, what can you do with it? The current advice is to put your disposable vape in the bin. The clue is in the name I guess, ‘disposable’ vape.

If this causes a pang of environmental guilt that you’re adding to the millions of tons of e-waste in the UK every year, and sending valuable heavy metals such as lithium to landfill, well… Yea, not much you can do about that really.

If you do want to vape, the best idea is to get a reusable vape rather than a disposable. This means less single use batteries going to landfill, and also means you reduce your waste generally.

The thing you definitely don’t want to do is throw your disposable e-cig into the street, or into the wilds of nature. If you are using a disposable vape, make a point of making sure it goes in the bin.

The problem with disposable vapes is, of course, that they are a total disaster environmentally.

So if you do want to help the environment and avoid creating unnecessary waste, aim to go reusable. Or better still, quit smoking and vaping altogether.

Read more about what to do with your disposable vapes.