Disposable E-cigarette Waste Poses Problems For U.S. City Management
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Disposable e-cigarette waste poses problems for U.S. city management
Currently, disposable e-cigarette waste poses new management challenges to local governments in the United States. The main problem is that used batteries are classified as hazardous waste.
Disposable vaping devices contain nicotine, lithium and other metals and cannot be reused or recycled. According to U.S. environmental laws, they should not be thrown into the trash.
"We're in a very strange regulatory environment where there's no legal place to put these things," Yogi Hale-Hendlin, a health and environmental researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, told The Associated Press in an interview. You know, tens of millions of single-use items are thrown into the trash every year.”
In late August, sanitation workers in Monroe County, New York, packed more than 5,500 e-cigarettes into 55-gallon steel drums and transported them to a large industrial waste incinerator in northern Arkansas, where they were melted. Local officials say it's the only way to keep the equipment out of waterways and landfills.
"Disposable e-cigarette waste presents a fire risk. If not managed properly, they can certainly become an environmental contaminant," said Michael Garland, director of environmental services for Monroe County.
Elsewhere, disposable e-cigarette waste disposal is expensive and complex. In New York City, law enforcement officers confiscated hundreds of thousands of banned e-cigarettes from local stores, costing more than $1 each to dispose of.
Critics point out that the e-cigarette industry should bear the responsibility for protecting the environment, and regulators should require the industry to make changes to make e-cigarette components easier to recycle or reduce waste.
According to U.S. government data, the U.S. e-cigarette market is worth billions of dollars, with disposable e-cigarettes accounting for about 53% of its e-cigarette market, more than doubling since 2020.
