The environmental impact of vape products: Pollution from production to “disposal”

Starting at the very beginning of their production, vapes are devastating for our environment. Sourcing raw materials for these products is highly resource intensive, requiring not just plastics, but heavy metals, lithium-ion for batteries, and nicotine from tobacco plants.12

Take the lithium batteries in vapes, for example. Lithium mining for these types of batteries creates an environmental issue of rising concern. In one form of mining, around 15 metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) are emitted for every ton of lithium sourced.3 This extraction process also requires the use of chemicals and immense amounts of water and can leave contaminants and other toxic waste in its wake.4

The nicotine used in these products often comes from tobacco plants.5 With the farming of tobacco plants comes the destruction of forests, contamination of soil, and depletion of water supplies that is common practice across the tobacco product production chain.6 Not only does tobacco require the use of harsh pesticides and fertilizers which damage the soil, but the industry cuts down nearly 600 million trees a year for growing, harvesting, and curing.78 To put that into perspective, that’s over 16 times the amount of trees California lost this past year primarily to drought.9

By design, the majority of vapes are meant to be disposed of after single or short-term use, which is why some vape products feature replaceable pods or cartridges pre-filled with e-juice.10 This sales model ensures that consumers constantly need to purchase new products, which creates new waste. At the beginning of 2020, rising vape use among youth prompted action from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA): The agency banned flavors other than tobacco and menthol in pod or cartridge-based vapes.11 But thanks to intense tobacco industry lobbying efforts, the FDA’s policy did not include disposable vapes.1213  Not surprisingly, the popularity of disposable products like Puff Bar took off.14 Even as the FDA tried to remove these products, other disposable vapes flooded the marketplace and today, disposable vapes remain one of the most popular flavored tobacco products among youth.151617

Vape waste isn’t new. The environmental impacts of vape products are visible throughout the state, including on school campuses. In 2019, California researchers did some “shoe-leather investigating,” collecting tobacco, cannabis, and vape waste from a dozen high school parking lots across the San Francisco Bay Area. Vape waste made up 19 percent of the litter recovered – debris that would have been hard to find on school campuses, let alone in the environment, a decade ago.18

By nature, the environmental impact of vaping produces extremely high volumes of waste. Consider that one survey found that 3.6 million U.S. adults vape daily.19 If even just one-third of this group uses one pod or disposable vape a day, that would produce nearly half a billion pieces of vape waste in one year. And this isn’t counting vape waste from the estimated more than 2.5 million U.S. middle and high school students who vape.20

To make matters worse, disposable vapes create a huge plastic pollution problem. Almost every part of a vape is made of plastic.21 Whether it’s the device body, pods or cartridges, or the battery housing, these components never biodegrade.22

Meaning that while vapes almost never completely deteriorate, they break down into smaller and smaller pieces of plastic called microplastics.23 Though often invisible to the human eye, microplastics are a global problem – polluting the food we eat, the water we drink, and even the air we breathe.242526 Microplastics have been found in sea water, tap water, and urban water runoff.272829 Due to their tiny size, microplastics are challenging to remove from our food and water sources.30 It may come as a surprise that Americans ingest an estimated hundreds of thousands of microplastic particles a year.31 According to studies, microplastics have been found in human lungs, placenta, and blood; they’ve been linked to fertility issues, intestinal damage, and even mutations in DNA.323334353637383940

The tobacco industry has made vapes increasingly convenient by marketing disposable products as smokeless, affordable, sleek, and full of flavors to mask the harsh taste of chemicals used in tobacco products.4142 This is to addict the next generation of consumers for profit, with little regard for public health or the environmental impact of vaping.

So here we are: Unwanted plastic. Used-up e-juice. Toxic chemicals. Dead batteries. Because there’s no industry standard for how to recycle these tobacco products, vapes are often discarded in the trash or recycling bins, leading to a combination of plastic, hazardous waste, and e-waste, that wreaks havoc on our environment now and for years to come.45 Big Tobacco avoids disclosing this in their marketing and offers little to no guidance on how to dispose of their products because, put simply, there is no safe way to do so without taking it apart.46

The electronic waste components of vapes, like lithium-ion batteries, heating elements, microcontroller chips, and chargers, add another layer of disposal danger and environmental harm.47 It shouldn’t come as a surprise that 2.7 million tons of consumer electronic waste, including vape waste, wound up in landfills or incinerators in the U.S. in 2019.48 If vapes are put into garbage or trash receptacles, they pose a fire risk in waste and recycling facilities if damaged or exposed to high heat, putting buildings and workers’ safety at risk.4950

Big Tobacco does everything in its power to continue to deceive the public into thinking that vapes aren’t a huge strain on public health or a source of toxic tobacco pollution.6263

The most meaningful step we can take towards holding Big Tobacco accountable for the devastating environmental impact of vape products is refusing to play their games. 

So, where do we start?

If you currently vape, quit. Do it for your health and the environment! If you need help, Kick It California has free vape quitting services, including an app. Visit KickItCA.org for more information.

Even if you don’t use tobacco products, everyone can get involved in their community’s efforts in a couple of ways:

1. Help spread the word about harmful vape waste.
2. Write a letter of concern.
3. Connect with a local group that’s fighting back against the tobacco industry.