Fire and ‘sheer volume’: how Britain’s 6m-vape problem is putting recycling under strain | Vaping

IIt’s 2 p.m. and Ana, 47, has just started her afternoon shift at the Suez recycling plant near Birmingham city centre, standing under a sign that reads “Non-ferrous sorting station” with a bucket of e-cigarettes in front of her. Separating them and taking them apart is part of his job as a field operator.

Recycling them is not simple. Each bucket holds between 40 and 50 devices, taking up about half the bucket during a shift. Using a hammer, he must break open each e-cigarette, remove the batteries, and separate each component into a separate container.

Disposable e-cigarettes were banned in June last year, but more than 6 million e-cigarettes and e-cigarette pods are still thrown away every week in the UK. Waste management companies say that the amount of waste strains recycling systems, while hidden lithium-ion batteries inside devices cause fires.

A sugary scent fills the air as Ana works; He’s not worried about e-cigarettes exploding, saying it hasn’t happened to him yet. However, although electronic cigarettes are not dangerous at this stage of classification, they can become dangerous when crushed or damaged in situations such as waste collection and storage.

There were 670 fires at Suez’s facilities in the UK in 2025. Of these, 368 were confirmed to be caused by batteries or vaping, while 176 were suspected to be linked. Those who work at the facilities say people don’t understand that e-cigarettes can’t be thrown away, or they incorrectly think they can be recycled with household products. Instead they need to be taken to special electricity recycling points.

Suez’s sustainability and external relations officer, Dr. “More than 80% of fires reported at our sites last year were suspected to be caused by vaping, with the numbers and trend continuing into 2026,” says Adam Read.

“This is despite the single-use e-cigarette ban coming into force in the middle of 2025. With more than 6 million e-cigarettes still being thrown away every week, it’s clear that the perception of these items remains that they are disposable. The problem is that people often don’t realize the danger that batteries pose when not disposed of correctly and think they’re doing the right thing by recycling them.”

Read adds: “Across the industry, we estimate that around £1 billion a year is or needs to be spent tackling this problem… Landfills are now viewed by insurers as some of the highest risk sites due to the prevalence of fire.”

He remembers a massive fire at a facility in Aberdeen four years ago that destroyed the facility. “The £20 million investment is gone… These are serious risks,” he says.

According to Read, the main reason is simple: frequency. “Other battery-operated products, such as electric toothbrushes, don’t show up very often in the waste pile because people keep them for years. But e-cigarettes are constantly used and thrown away. It’s the sheer volume that matters.”

Now every fire investigation starts the same way. “We almost always look for lithium-ion batteries as a starting point, and then we ask: Was this an e-cigarette?”

While a ban on disposable vapes aims to tackle the problem, industry figures say the problem has simply changed.

Nearly 150 e-cigarettes were found at the Birmingham recycling facility in just six hours since operations began at 6am. Staff say devices are changing: Instead of once-ubiquitous disposable brands like Elfbar, larger, rechargeable e-cigarettes like Hayati are now more common in the waste stream.

An Elfbar spokesperson said: “Spent devices and refills should always be disposed of responsibly. Vapers are encouraged to take advantage of take-back services provided by retailers selling vapes who are legally obliged to accept them. Thousands of recycling points can also be found at Material Focus across the UK. Recycle Your Electrical Items website.”

Hayati did not respond to attempts to contact him for comment.

Because these devices are generally not much more expensive than disposable devices, critics argue that there is little incentive for users to change their behavior.

Steve Daniels, Suez’s operations manager, says: “We’re seeing a change in the size of e-cigarettes being thrown away because these are the ones that need to be charged. We used to see smaller e-cigarettes like the 600 puff ones, but now as you’ll see on the production floor these are the larger, rechargeable types and have larger batteries.”

When recycling material enters the facility, it is first separated according to its size. Larger items that are not suitable (such as canisters of nitrous oxide) are often removed. However, the larger e-cigarette devices that are becoming more common are increasingly shifting from this stage and are instead identified later during aluminum sorting, where they often appear among crushed cans.

Read says manufacturers need to take more responsibility for the products they produce. “We argued that if an e-cigarette costs £10, there should be a carrying cost of £5. This reflects the true cost of dealing with it safely,” he says. “This financial factor can change behavior.”

Another proposed solution is a deposit refund scheme for electronic cigarettes, similar to those planned for beverage containers.

“If people could return e-cigarettes and get £1 or £2 back, you would significantly reduce the number that ends up in overall waste,” he says. “This can reduce fire risk by 70-90%.”

For now, the burden falls on workers like Ana, who carefully disassemble the devices by hand, one by one.

A government spokesman said: “We are committed to ensuring more e-cigarettes are recycled correctly and safely and have made it mandatory for all vape retailers to provide recycling bins. We will continue to work with Trading Standards and local authorities to build on the 10,500 take-back bins we already have on our high streets.”