UK environment department proposes separate waste regulations for vaping devices

The UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) plans to ensure that e-cigarette manufacturers cover the full cost of disposing of their devices under the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) regulations.

As part of a consultation launched last week, a new category is planned to calculate the costs of collecting, processing, recycling, and recovering e-cigarettes.

The consultation states: "Creating a new category for e-cigarettes will ensure that e-cigarette manufacturers pay the full costs of separate collection and recycling of discarded e-cigarettes," and it indicates that this will eliminate the risk of other WEEE manufacturers "subsidizing" the waste obligations of the e-cigarette industry.

This will remove the risk of [producer compliance schemes] incurring disproportionate costs in collecting and recycling e-cigarettes relative to the share of e-cigarettes launched by their members in the UK market.

This change is part of a comprehensive review of the WEEE regulations, which has been called for by the recycling industry, noting that e-cigarettes are currently classified under "Category 7," alongside toys and leisure equipment, which is deemed unfair.

It is estimated that nearly 5 million e-cigarettes are discarded weekly in the UK, almost four times the amount from a year ago, with the costs of collecting and recycling improperly disposed devices estimated at £200 million.

The Local Government Association, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, and dozens of councils in Scotland are calling for a ban on disposable e-cigarettes, similar to many other countries.

Under the current system, Defra states that compliance schemes and producers are not required to collect e-cigarettes to meet their recycling targets, as this can be achieved by collecting other Category 7 items.

When a scheme collects e-cigarettes, manufacturers of other toys and leisure equipment currently have to share higher processing costs, unfairly increasing their compliance costs. Defra states that this has deterred compliance schemes from signing up e-cigarette manufacturers.