Vaping problem: How to safely get rid of disposable e-cigarettes?
WASHINGTON — With the growing popularity of disposable e-cigarettes, communities across the United States are confronting a new vaping problem: how to safely get rid of millions of small, battery-powered devices that are considered hazardous waste. For years, the debate surrounding vaping largely centered on its risks for high school and middle school students enticed by flavors like gummy bears, lemonade, and watermelon. However, the recent shift toward e-cigarettes that can’t be refilled has created a new environmental dilemma. The devices, which contain nicotine, lithium, and other metals, cannot be reused or recycled. Under federal environmental law, they also aren’t supposed to go in the trash. READ: Vaping’s toxic waste a new headache for schools, cities US teens and adults are buying roughly 12 million disposable vapes per month. With little federal guidance, local officials are finding their own ways to dispose of e-cigarettes collected from schools, colleges, vape shops, and other sites. “We are in a really weird regulatory place where there is no legal place to put these and yet we know, every year, tens of millions of disposables are thrown in the trash,” said Yogi Hale Hendlin, a health and environmental researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. In late August, sanitation workers in Monroe County, New York, packed more than 5,500 brightly colored e-cigarettes into 55-gallon steel drums for transport. Their destination? A giant, industrial waste incinerator in northern Arkansas, where they would be melted down. READ: Australia to ban recreational vaping in e-cigarette crackdown Sending 350 pounds of vapes across the country to be burned into ash may not sound environmentally friendly. But local officials say it’s the only way to keep the nicotine-filled devices out of sewers, waterways and landfills, where their lithium batteries can catch fire. “These are very insidious devices,” said Michael Garland, who directs the county’s environmental services. “They’re a fire risk and they’re certainly an environmental contaminant if not managed properly.” Elsewhere, the disposal process has become both costly and complicated. In New York City, for example, officials are seizing hundreds of thousands of banned vapes from local stores and spending more than $1 each for disposal. READ: As vaping ‘epidemic’ grips PH youth, tobacco sellers flout law vs targeting kids Hazardous waste Vaping critics say the industry has skirted responsibility for the environmental impact of its products, while federal regulators have failed to force changes that could make
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