Vapes and e-cigarette cartridges are full of hazardous materials, including toxic liquids, nicotine and lithium batteries that can catch fire, and there is growing confusion over the best way to responsibly dispose of them.
In Western Australia, councils and waste management authorities are responsible for the disposal of most household rubbish but have limited scope to manage hazardous waste from used vapes.
A spokesperson from WA's Department of Water and Environmental Regulation (DWER) said vapes accounted for a small percentage of waste, but there were no specific guidelines for disposing of them.
Reece Russell, who manages one of WA's licensed vape disposal companies, said there was a lack of understanding about how to dispose of used devices as vaping exploded in popularity.
A chemical engineer, Mr Russell said disposal of vape cartridges was complex, expensive and confusing for the general public.
"Vapes need to be pulled apart before they can be disposed of. There are various hazardous components to them — a lithium battery, toxic liquids, nicotine," he said.
"The cheaply made lithium batteries can cause a fire if they are disposed of incorrectly into general waste and if they're damaged."
Mr Russell said it was concerning to see "single-use" vape cartridges discarded on the side of the road or disposed of incorrectly.
"You see them everywhere you go, just thrown on the side of the road," he said.
"They're the new cigarette butt, they are a single-use, disposable item."
Mr Russell said some of his biggest clients were high schools, with many paying to ensure confiscated vape paraphernalia was correctly disposed of.
"From schools, we will generally collect 50 to 100 at a time, but we're getting more and more every week because they're increasing in popularity," he said.
"They can be up to $10 per item to dispose of. It's quite a big effort to pull them apart, and they are expensive to get rid of the individual components.
"It's really a begrudged cost for schools because they're not planning on this cost that's coming straight off their bottom line, and it's not something that they should really have to deal with."
A WA Education Department spokesperson said there was no available data about the number of vapes that had been confiscated, but in 2022 there were 3,732 vaping or e-cigarette-related student suspensions.
"We're getting calls from members of the public all the time looking for somewhere to dispose of them," Mr Russell said.
"At the moment there's not many central locations where you can take them.
"We're trying to work with local governments and schools to find a solution for this waste at the moment it is very, very difficult."
No vape waste guidelines in WA
A DWER spokesperson said the state government was assessing the need for further action as part of its broader work on waste management.
"B-Cycle, the national accredited Battery Stewardship Scheme, accepts many types of batteries for recycling, this includes batteries that are easily removed from products like some vapes, as well as household and rechargeable batteries," the spokesperson said.
Shannon Mead, chief executive of environmental group No More Butts, said the group was seeing a "dramatic increase" in vape waste.
"With recent reports of the amount of people vaping, we would see that this new fad is contributing more than 1,000 tonnes of e-waste and creating the potential for dozens of fires," Mr Mead said.
But he counselled against vape users pulling the devices apart themselves.
"Whilst some videos have demonstrated how you can take the vapes apart yourself, we would not encourage people to do this, because of the electronics, nicotine and batteries inside," he said.
Mr Mead said the ideal solution would be to implement a regulated national vape recycling program.
"A scheme would also enable better transparency of importation data and retail sales data, which will assist in assessing the true impact of this trend."
Importers should foot the bill
Stefan Frodsham, CEO of one of WA's largest waste management services, Western Metropolitan Regional Council, said vape waste was "problematic" for the entire waste industry.
He said vapes were a "disposable" product being sold without any clear disposal or reprocessing pathway.
He said hazardous waste processing was funded by the state government and administered through the WA Local Government Association (WALGA).
WALGA president Karen Chappel agreed that vape importers, producers or distributors should foot the bill for recycling and disposal.
"Unfortunately, a rapidly changing waste stream has turned the process of managing end-of-life products into an expensive and complicated activity for local governments," she said.
"The concept of extended producer responsibility is important to local governments, as it has the ability to redistribute the responsibility for an end-of-life product onto others in a product's supply chain."
Mr Russell said he was working with some WA local governments and waste authorities to come up with a solution.
"People need somewhere where they can take them, where we can then dispose of them correctly," he said.
"And really, once we do have those larger numbers together, the cost disposal will come down."
