Pressure is growing to reduce our use of plastics, internationally and at home.
Our massive use of plastic globally keeps us hooked on fossil fuels and continues to create widespread contamination of the environment by long-lived compounds. WWF estimate that the cost to society of our use of plastics could almost double to $7 trillion by 2040. A report earlier this year found that a 75% reduction in fossil-fuel-based plastics use is needed by 2050 if the world is to meet climate targets.
A new UN Treaty on plastics has been making progress, with a first draft published this autumn. It proposes bans on the most problematic plastics and also focuses attention on phasing out single use products. Now a group of major financial institutions is calling for the new treaty to also oblige governments to force larger companies to report on their use of plastics.
Meanwhile the Scottish Parliament is continuing to hear evidence on the Circular Economy Bill. This still could transform the way we consider material resources and waste, but it needs serious improvement if it is to deliver on this potential. Tough measures are needed in the Bill because our household recycling rates are well off track to meet future targets, and measures on prevention of waste, and repair and reuse of consumer goods are all at an early stage.
Disposable vapes are perhaps the most obvious example of our crazy attitude to material resources – one of the most wasteful consumer items you can buy. More than any other single-use item, they are clearly something which should never have been allowed on the market. They waste valuable resources, contain lithium batteries which could be recharged 500 times but are instead used just once and then dumped, and a much better product exists in the form of re-usable vapes, which do exactly the same job but are rechargeable and refillable.
I wrote about disposable vapes last year. At that point figures suggested that around 1.3 million were being thrown away every week in the UK. The latest figure is nearly 8 million, partly because of better data, but largely because of the continued growth in sales, which has seen sales double over the last year.
Tens of millions of disposable vapes are consumed in Scotland every year and research by Zero Waste Scotland found that around 10% end up as litter in the streets. Vape batteries have already been linked to multiple fires at waste and recycling centres. Most shops that sell them will not take them back for recycling.
Two weeks ago waste campaigner Laura Young won a well-deserved award for her great work on waste in general and specifically on banning disposable vapes. Partly because of Laura’s work, the Green MSP Gillian Mackay led a debate on disposable vapes in the Scottish Parliament in September.
Hopes for a ban are on the horizon. The UK government has launched a consultation on smoking which could lead to a ban on disposable vapes. The Scottish Government has also recently said it will consult on banning them.
Disposable vapes are not the largest environmental problem the world faces but they are a very visible sign of our throw-away culture. A ban cannot come soon enough.
The UK Government consultation closes on the 6th of December.
A version of this article appeared in the Scotsman newspaper on 22nd November 2023.