Half a billion cheap electrical items go to UK landfills in a year, research finds
Half a billion cheap electrical items go to UK landfills in a year, research finds
Research by Material Focus shows everyday items such as disposable vapes are a big contributing factor
This included 260m disposable vapes
Material Focus said that when consumers bought a cheap item, they saw it as disposable.
"And so you disposed of the disposable vape? Why did you assume that that was the appropriate way to deal with it?"
"It was an innocent mistake! It could have happened to anyone!"
11Exactly. The fact that "disposable" vapes even exist is mind-boggling. And now they account for more than half of the electrical waste going to landfill. 🤦🏻♂️
Why do they even exist? Can't they be banned?
It's like buying a USB battery pack to recharge your phone - and then chucking it out after it's run out.
19Disposable vapes are actually made in a way where they would be fully reusable if they had a charging port and replacement cartridges available so it's not even anything but pure greed and laziness
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Disposable vapes - ignoring all other issues with them for a second - shouldn't be going to landfill though. They are electronic waste and should be being dealt with appropriately.
The problem is that it's next to impossible to actually handle WEEE correctly even for occasional purchases like routers, hard drives, laptops, etc, so how on earth disposable vapes are meant to be appropriately disposed of is beyond me.
11It's far easier for most people to just throw them in the bin though, and the past of least resistance is the one usually followed.
Even then, even if electronic waste handling was more accessible disposable vapes would still be an enormous additional volume of waste that doesn't need to exist in the first place.
12The problem is that it's next to impossible to actually handle WEEE correctly even for occasional purchases like routers, hard drives, laptops, etc, so how on earth disposable vapes are meant to be appropriately disposed of is beyond me.
In South Wales, we can take anything like that to the local tip for free. Household batteries get put in a separate bag and put out with the recycling.
It wouldn't be worth the trip for one or two vapes, but a bag full wouldn't take a lot of space between trips.
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The fact that vape companies seem to make their disposable offerings the only ones with the 'good' experience, while their reusable items are objectively inferior is a crime against environment.
9I'd be interested to know the proportion of people who know how electronic waste can be recycled. And how often the average person visits their local recycling center.
I have dozens of items boxed up in need of disposal but I never find the time to research how, let alone making the journey to a recycling center
8I know you can take them to the recycling centre, but I don't have a car, so I just hoard them in a room in my house.
Depending on the item, I sometimes hoard it in a different room, where I can fix it or dismantle it for useful components, if I ever had the time or inclination to do so.
Fortunately though, once a year, our local council does a "put it on the street and we'll take it" day, and they come and collect things and take them to the right place.
5We've got U-Haul in the US; one can rent a truck ranging from pickup sized up to tractor-trailer size. If the UK doesn't have U-Haul, they'll have some company that fills the same role.
googles
Yeah, they're in the UK. Checking the prices at a random UK location, it looks like a pickup or cargo van runs $19.95 plus $0.59/kilometer. Though...you'd need to have a driver's license or know someone who does. Hmm. That's not something that comes up much over here, outside of maybe New York City.
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Mattresses should be recyclable
4This is the best summary I could come up with:
Almost half a billion small, cheap electrical everyday items from headphones to handheld fans ended up in landfill in the UK in the past year, according to research.
The not-for-profit organisation Material Focus, which conducted the research, said the scale of the issue was huge and they wanted to encourage more recycling.
This included 260m disposable vapes, 26m cables, 29m LED, solar and decorative lights, 9.8m USB sticks, and 4.8m miniature fans.
Material Focus said that while people were used to the idea of recycling larger electrical items such as fridges, lots of smaller devices were left unused in houses.
In the average UK home, the research found, there were four to five charging cables, two to three mobile phones, and two to three remote controls cluttering up cupboards.
A Material Focus survey of 2,000 people found that every year, the average UK adult buys nine electrical items cheaply and throws away eight.
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