New Zealand Launches A World-First Vapes’ Recycling Programme

Source from:  Vapingpost 08/19/2020

A partnership between leading vape companies Vapo, Alt New Zealand and innovative recycling giant TerraCycle, means that e-cigarette waste from Vapo and Alt brands, can be dropped off at any Vapo store to be recycled.

Researchers have estimated that by 2021, there will be 55 million adult vapers, and therefore if disposed of improperly, the large amount of devices used could create a massive recycling disaster.

“E-waste is a huge problem globally. Anytime we make something that is disposable, we’re essentially stealing from the future,” said Yogi Hale Hendlin from the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, last year.

Hendlin had pointed out that each stage of the e-cigarette production could pose a potential environmental harm, from mining, manufacturing, using and disposing. Citing a 2017 CDC study, he had explained that in 2015, over 58 million vaping products were sold in the U.S. at grocery and convenience stores alone. About 19 million of those products were designed for single use.

The researcher had pointed out that the resulting e-waste is often shipped from Western countries to developing countries, which places the environmental hazard of reprocessing, reclaiming and incinerating waste on these poorer nations. “Most of these devices don’t include instructions on how to dispose of the products. And the ones that do often include a convoluted process, and it gets incinerated in the end, which isn’t ecological at all.”  Enditem