Borderers are being encouraged to responsibly recycle their vapes and e-cigarettes at one of their local Community Recycle Centres across the region to minimise the risk of potentially dangerous fires
Rise in fires related to vapes
The plea comes after a rise in near-miss incidents across our waste vehicles and waste transfer stations where highly flammable vapes and e-cigarettes have combusted after being wrongly disposed of in general waste or regular recycling bins.
The devices, which contain lithium batteries, are prone to overheating if not recycled properly in a designated battery or vape bin.
Recycle your vapes and e-cigaretes correctly
We have recently added vape/e-cigarette specific recycling bins to all its CRC sites to ensure as many as possible are responsibly disposed of and in turn avoid potentially deadly fires from breaking out.
Zero Waste Scotland estimates that up to 26 million disposable vapes were consumed and thrown away in Scotland in the last year, with 10 per cent being littered and more than half disposed of incorrectly.
Councillor Jenny Linehan, Executive Member for Environment & Transport:
“An estimated 1.3 million vapes or e-cigarettes are discarded across the UK every week and many are disposed of incorrectly.
“This increases the risk of fires in our waste collection vehicles or in our waste transfer stations as the batteries overheat rapidly and can spontaneously combust.
“We’ve recently had a number of dangerous incidents caused by fires started by vapes and when this happens it can cause a serious risk to life for the staff working in these areas and damage expensive equipment paid for by the taxpayer.
“With this in mind I’m appealing to any users of vapes and e-cigarettes to make the effort to dispose of these items correctly for the safety of our staff and to ensure we can properly recycle these mass-produced items.
“All of our CRC’s can accept disposable and reusable vapes or e-cigarettes and even some of the larger supermarkets have specific bins where batteries and vapes can be disposed of responsibly.”