With the increasing popularity No-clean electronic cigaretteCommunities across the United States are facing a new vaping problem: how to safely dispose of millions of small, battery-powered devices that are considered hazardous waste.
Over the years, The debate surrounding e-cigarettes Focuses primarily on its risk to high school and middle school students attracted by taste Examples include gummy bears, lemonade and watermelon.
But the recent shift toward non-refillable e-cigarettes has created new environmental dilemmas. These devices contain nicotine, lithium and other metals and cannot be reused or recycled. They also shouldn’t be thrown into the trash under federal environmental laws.
U.S. teens and adults purchase approximately 12 million disposable e-cigarettes each month. With little federal guidance, local officials are finding their own ways to dispose of e-cigarettes collected from schools, colleges, vape shops and other places.
“We’re in a very strange regulatory environment where there’s no legal place to put these items, but we know that tens of millions of single-use items are thrown into the trash every year,” said Yogi Black, a health and environmental researcher at the agency. Yogi Hale Hendlin said. University of California, San Francisco.
In late August, sanitation workers in Monroe County, New York, packed more than 5,500 brightly colored e-cigarettes into 55-gallon steel drums for transportation. Their destination? There is a huge industrial waste incinerator in northern Arkansas where the waste will be melted.
Sending 350 pounds of e-cigarettes across the country to be incinerated may not sound environmentally friendly. But local officials say it’s the only way to prevent nicotine-filled devices from entering sewers, waterways and landfills, where lithium batteries can catch fire.
“These are very insidious devices,” said Michael Garland, the county’s environmental services director. “They present a fire risk and if not managed properly they can certainly become environmental pollutants.”
Elsewhere, processing has become expensive and complex. In New York City, for example, officials seized hundreds of thousands of contraband e-cigarettes from local stores, costing about 85 cents each to dispose of.
Hazardous waste
Critics of e-cigarettes say the industry has sidestepped responsibility for the environmental impact of its products, while federal regulators have failed to force changes that would make e-cigarette components easier to recycle or reduce waste.
Possible changes include standards requiring e-cigarettes to be reusable or forcing manufacturers to fund collection and recycling programs. New York, California and several other states have so-called extended product liability laws for computers and other electronics. But those laws don’t cover vaping products, and there are no similar federal requirements for any industry.
The EPA’s hazardous waste regulations don’t apply to homes, meaning it’s legal for someone to throw e-cigarettes into the trash at home. But most businesses, schools and government facilities are bound by EPA standards on how to handle harmful chemicals like nicotine, which the EPA considers an “acute hazardous waste” because it can be toxic at high levels.
In the United States, the impetus to regulate disposable e-cigarettes comes primarily from schools, which may face tighter regulations if they generate more than a few pounds of hazardous waste per month. Monroe County Schools pay $60 to dispose of each gallon of e-cigarette container. More than two-thirds of the e-cigarettes collected in the county come from schools.
“Our schools are very relieved that they confiscated so much of this material,” Garland said. “If you think about all the high schools across the country, they’re in a very difficult position right now.”
Lithium in e-cigarette batteries is as much sought after as the metal used to power electric cars and cellphones. But the quantities used in vaping devices are too small to be recycled. And nearly all disposable e-cigarette batteries are welded into the device, making it impractical to recycle them separately.
Disposable e-cigarettes now account for about 53% of the multibillion-dollar e-cigarette market in the United States, which has more than doubled since 2020, according to U.S. government data.
Their rise is a study in unintended consequences.
At the beginning of 2020, the Food and Drug Administration Ban almost all flavors Reusable e-cigarettes like Juul, the pod-based device blamed for sparking a nationwide craze The number of minors using e-cigarettes has surged.But the policy Not suitable for disposable itemsopening the door to thousands of new varieties of fruit-flavored and candy-flavored e-cigarettes, almost all made in China.
In recent months, the FDA has begun trying to block the importation of several leading disposable brands, including Elf Bar and Esco Bar. Regulators considered them all illegal, but they were unable to stop them from entering the United States, and the devices are now ubiquitous in convenience stores, gas stations and other stores.
FDA tobacco chief Brian King said in a statement that the agency “will continue to carefully consider the potential environmental impacts of e-cigarette products.”
forfeited fees
In 2020, New York City outlawed most e-cigarette types, banning flavors that appealed to young people.
City staff conduct thousands of inspections each year, issuing more than 2,400 tickets last year to corner stores and bodegas selling illegal condiments. To add insult to injury, THC e-cigarettes sell for hundreds of dollars. Unlicensed cannabis storeA separate but related question has quickly arisen since New York legalized recreational marijuana.
Officials have seized more than 449,000 e-cigarettes since November, according to city data. The city spent about $1,400 to destroy each container containing 1,200 confiscated e-cigarettes, but many more remain in city lockers.
“I don’t think anyone considers the number of these problems in our communities,” said New York Police Chief Anthony Miranda, who leads a task force on the issue. “A lot of resources went into this effort.”
A recent lawsuit against four large e-cigarette distributors seeks to recoup some of the city’s costs.
Currently, New Yorkers who vape can bring their used e-cigarettes to city-sponsored waste collection events.
Eventually, the e-cigarettes met a familiar fate: They were shipped to Gum Springs, Arkansas, and incinerated by international waste management company Veolia. In recent years, the company has incinerated more than 1.6 million pounds of e-cigarette waste, much of it unsold inventory or discontinued products.
Veolia executives say burning e-cigarette lithium batteries could damage their incinerators.
“Ideally, we don’t want to incinerate them because it has to be done very, very slowly. But we will do it if necessary,” said Bob Cappadona, head of the company’s environmental services division.
Veolia also processes e-cigarettes from Boulder County, Colorado, which is one of the only U.S. jurisdictions that actively attempts to recycle e-cigarette batteries and components.
Historically, Boulder has had one of the highest rates of youth e-cigarette use in the country, peaking at nearly 33% in 2017.
“It’s like someone flipped a switch. All of a sudden, e-cigarettes are everywhere,” said Daniel Ryan, principal of Centaur High School.
Starting in 2019, county officials began distributing bins to schools for confiscating or discarding e-cigarettes. Last year, they collected 3,500.
County staff sorts devices by type and separates devices with removable batteries for recycling. Disposable items are packaged and shipped to the Veolia incinerator. Shelley Fuller, director of the program, said that as e-cigarette waste shifts to disposable e-cigarettes, managing e-cigarette waste is becoming more expensive and more labor-intensive.
“I kind of miss the days when we had Juuls and I could easily take out each battery and recycle them,” Fuller said. “No one has time to tear down a thousand Esco bars.”
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AP video journalist Joseph Frederick in New York contributed to this report
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The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science & Education Media Group. The Associated Press is solely responsible for all content.
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