Disposable Vapes: Environmental Impact

Ruth Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Murray, and it is good to be in Westminster Hall with colleagues for this important debate. I acknowledge the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) for securing the debate and providing Members from all parties with the opportunity to address our collective responsibility to preserve our planet, protect our environment and leave a world for the next generation.

I gently suggest to the hon. Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) that he may be on the wrong tack, as new evidence is revealing that vaping is encouraging young people to get into smoking, rather than the other way around. However, before you remind me to do so, Mrs Murray, I will return to the topic in hand of the environmental impact of vapes.

We have heard today about the scourge of waste in our communities increasingly being caused by disposable vapes. We need and expect our Ministers in DEFRA to stand up and be counted. They need to give councils the resources they need to keep our communities clean and safe and I encourage Members to continue to raise this issue in seeking help, change and assistance. I assure them that Labour will act when we form the next Government if Tory Ministers fail to deliver in the coming months.

Thanks to a lost decade of Tory austerity, waste is piling up on high streets and street corners and in our green open spaces. It is being exported to some of the world’s poorest countries, where what was supposed to be recycled material ends up in landfill, polluting our oceans and being shipped back to Britain for us to deal with. That is a very real problem and it requires speedy, comprehensive and properly funded solutions.

Without question, the problems have been made worse by the increasing use of disposable vapes. Members from all parties will know, as I know the Minister does, that many of the agencies that should tackle waste and pollution are underfunded and understaffed. The Environment Agency has struggled to tackle waste crime and to monitor waste exports because of the cuts to its budget and staff numbers, and we all know the impact that austerity has had on local government.

I thank the Wildlife and Countryside Link for its very helpful briefing ahead of the debate, in which it notes that the use of vapes has surged over recent years. Those items are now ubiquitous; they are for sale on every high street and are used by millions on a daily basis. As we have already heard, they are now increasingly to be found littering the natural environment.

Research suggests that half a billion vapes are now purchased every year, with almost a fifth of UK adults having bought a vape that is either single use, rechargeable or rechargeable with a single-use chamber. Further research by Material Focus has found that 37% of people who purchased vapes in the last year bought a disposable vape, and that figure rises to 52% for 18 to 34-year-olds. Wildlife and Countryside Link says that researchers have found that since 2021 there has been more than a sevenfold increase in the proportion of 11 to 17-year-olds in the UK who use disposable vapes.

Material Focus goes on to claim that at least 1.3 million disposable vapes are thrown away every week, which equates, as we have already heard, to two vapes being thrown away every second. Around 1 million of those disposable vapes are not recycled. That is unsustainable and requires action from Ministers. I would be grateful if the Minister could outline, in precise terms, what is being done to tackle the issue.

Last week, the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, the right hon. Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne), agreed with the claim that there is a risk that delay will become the default culture in DEFRA. He highlighted that the targets in the Environment Act 2021 for extended producer responsibility for textiles, fishing gear and packaging, and the deposit return scheme in England are all behind schedule. Furthermore, last week also marked a year of inaction since the Government opened consultations on bans on plastic plates and cutlery, alongside a call for evidence on a wider suite of items that could be restricted, including action on tobacco filters. There is much more to do.

The Minister will know that in England the total volume of aggregate waste increased by 12% between 2010 and 2018. Recycling must outpace the growth in consumption; it really is a simple equation. Despite the new powers on waste targets in the Environment Act 2021, I am afraid that I must remind the House that the Government have delayed the roll-out of important elements of extended producer responsibility, including the scheme administrators and fee modulation.

Actual delivery is running far behind even the relatively modest new proposed targets to reduce residual waste per capita by 50% by 2042 and to raise the current municipal recycling target of 65% by 2035 to between 70% and 75% by 2042. The inadequacies of waste collection and recycling systems mean that used compostable packaging tends to end up in landfill or incineration, or messes up recycling plants.

I do not want to irritate the Minister, but I want to talk about the Welsh Labour Government, because Wales has long been a standout performer in the United Kingdom on recycling rates and tackling waste pollution. The Welsh Labour Government’s £1 billion investment in household recycling since devolution has helped recycling rates to catapult from just 4.8% in 1998 to over 65% in 2021. If the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire has come to the Chamber today hoping to find solutions to tackling vaping waste in her constituency, I urge her to look to Wales. Like her, I asked the Secretary of State whether he had made an assessment of the impact of single-use vapes on waste levels in England. I received the following response from the Minister, which said:

“The Department has not undertaken an assessment of the environmental impact of disposable vapes in the UK, including on waste levels.”

I gently say to her that that is a disappointing response.

As the Minister winds up, I hope that I can get some answers to the following questions. Has she made an assessment of the environmental impact of disposable vapes in the UK, including on waste levels, since 24 October? What discussions have taken place with the Treasury and the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government about ensuring that councils have the resources needed to tackle waste pollution? Finally, what lessons have been picked up from the Welsh Labour and Scottish and Northern Irish Governments about their approach to tackling toxic waste, fly-tipping and waste pollution? I would be happy for the Minister to respond to me in writing, but I ask her for answers to those specific questions. This has been an interesting debate, and I am grateful to the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire for securing it.