Vaping groups have criticised the Scottish Government over their review to ban disposable e-cigs - but they’ve also called on customers to dispose of their products responsibly and in as environmentally friendly a way as possible.
For disposables, that means, if you can, dismantling the pen to separate out the precious lithium battery from the plastic or metal casing and dispose of all the bits appropriately.
I thought I'd give it a try. On vape websites and in YouTube tutorials, they make it seem like a doddle that takes a matter of minutes.
Maybe it should be - but that’s not what I found! I bought a selection of Elf Bar vapes from a shop in Glasgow at a fiver a pop - or £25 for my bundle of six - with 600 puffs per e-cigarette.
Back home, I set about my task. Crucially, perhaps, I lacked the pair of pliers that might have made it easier to remove the end of my Blueberry vape.
I also readily admit I’m not the handiest person in the world. But using a variety of tools - tweezers, a screwdriver, a penknife - and some brute force, I eventually prised open the gizmo.
If, by the way, this all seems like a massive hassle, the Scottish Government says you can recycle whole vapes at a waste recycling centre, sticking it in Waste of Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) recycling points.
But where I live, the nearest such centre is a couple of miles away, and I don’t have a car - so it’s not massively convenient.
So, back to the DIY job. A warning for anyone trying this at home - the battery inside, if pierced, can spark and cause fires, so handle with care. And wear gloves!
The battery, wires and wicking material can gently be pushed out with a pencil or pen. You’ll then want to separate the battery by carefully cutting each wire one at a time - I used a little pair of scissors.
But that’s just the start of the battle. Now you have to figure out how to dispose of it all. If the casing is plastic, that can be recycled normally, but some of the other wicking stuff is destined for the bin.
The lithium battery, meanwhile, can be taken to a local battery recycling point - shops like supermarkets and chemists often do it.
My first stop, a local Superdrug, couldn’t help - but the Tesco up the road was happy to. They did, however, have their battery bin stashed in the corner of the store, and it took an employee shifting stuff out of the way to make it accessible.
The bin was overflowing - not just with batteries, but with piles of what seemed to be whole finished vapes, which would appear to be against the government’s advice.
Not that any of this is particularly clear. And therein lies the rub.
Do users even know they’re supposed to be recycling these fiddly items? Do they know they shouldn’t just go in the bin?
And with all this hassle and confusion around how to dispose of them, is it any wonder so many just get chucked away?
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