An anti-waste advocate has shared a disheartening video on TikTok about the extent to which disposable vapes are polluting our waterways.
Less Waste Laura (@lesswastelaura) posted a video taken on a riverbed, with hundreds of tiny fish swimming in and out of the shot.
@lesswastelaura Disposables vapes are having endless amounts of impacts on our environment. They need to be banned. Will @UKLabour ♬ original sound - Less Waste Laura
They seem to be gathering around a discarded item, approaching it and trying to see if it could be a potential food source.
Laura reveals that the item is a disposable vape pen, which will likely remain in the river for decades unless someone removes it.
"Disposable vapes are having endless amounts of impacts on our environment," they captioned the post. "They need to be banned. Will [the UK's Labour government] commit to the 1st of April 2025 ban like the previous government did?"
Unfortunately, disposable vapes are becoming increasingly common in our natural world, as people either fail to recycle them properly or simply throw them on the ground after use.
Our disposable culture encourages such acts, meaning we don't take care of the items we own or simply discard them when they've come to the end of their usefulness. But this can result in needless pollution, contaminating water sources, presenting a risk to animal and plant life, and even causing damage to cars.
Vape pens typically contain lithium-ion batteries, which can be a fire hazard and can leach toxic chemicals if they split. What's more, the materials contained in them are valuable and increasingly rare, making this a waste of resources that will encourage increased mining activity to obtain new metals.
Furthermore, the vape pen itself is more often than not within a plastic casing, and if this is disposed of incorrectly, it will release over time micro- and nanoplastics, which have been linked to human health concerns. Those fish could be ingesting those plastics.
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"Every single manufacturer at every single point of materials sourcing should have a regulated reclamation and reuse plan," one TikTok comment read.
Some recycling points for disposable vape pens do exist; they just might be difficult to find. However, ending the production of these items is essential to stop the harm they do to the environment all the way through their life cycle.
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