Is Vaping Bad For The Environment?
Vaping And The Environment
Vaping and the environment - everything you need to know.
We’re all trying to be environmentally friendly these days, and for a lot of people that means cutting down on plastic waste. It's difficult to vape these days without encountering some form of single use plastic, although there are still some vape juice brands that use glass bottles.
Is vaping as bad as cigarettes for the environment?
Simply put !! No
Cigarette butts don’t just smell disgusting, they are also one of the most pervasive forms of pollution. There are a staggering 4.5 trillion individual cigarette butts polluting the oceans right now, making them a bigger polluter than plastic straws, bags or bottles.
Cigarette butts may be worse than plastic straws. In fact, cigarette butts make up 24% of the debris and pollution on beaches and waterways. That is staggering. All those tiny cigarette butts add up to a major problem. On top of that, all the toxins from cigarette butts leach into the water.
Cigarette butts are the most littered item on Earth
More than 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are littered every year
Cigarette butts are responsible for almost a quarter of debris littering our beaches and waterways
The fibers in cigarette butts are not easily biodegradable
Tests show that after two years, only 38% of a cigarette breaks down
Toxic chemicals like arsenic leach into soil and water from cigarette butts
And those butts aren’t made of paper. The vast majority are actually made of cellulose acetate, which is a man made plastic which takes about ten years to biodegrade - so the cigarettes in the ocean at the time of writing could have been smoked as far back as 2012. Smoking-related debris counts for about a third of the debris found on beaches, in rivers and in streams today according to the Cigarette Butt Pollution Project
If you are measuring environmental impact on a relative scale, smoking cigarettes is much worse for the environment than vaping. There is no arsenic in vaping! While we cannot say that vaping reduces risk for human health yet, I think the evidence clearly shows that cigarette litter is a far greater threat to our environment. The great thing about vaping and the environment is that every part of an e-cig is recyclable .
For a little perspective, one study found that one cigarette butt in a liter of water killed have the fish in the water. The chemicals are cigarettes are a horror show. Imagine four and one half trillion cigarette butts cast into the streets and beaches every year. That cannot be sustainable.
Is Vaping Bad For The Environment
Ultimately, the best thing for the environment would be to live off the land and to never use electronics of any kind. Also to never use plastic straws or throw away old shoes. Everything is relative. Life leaves a footprint. Vaping requires batteries, electronic devices, e-liquid containers, and coils that have to be replaced. All of these items could potentially end up in landfills. But once again, these items are also recyclable.
The new trend in pod mods may cause more refuse, but not nearly as much as cigarette butts! Some pods are designed for a one-time use and may not be recyclable. You can call a local recycling center to see if a pod is appropriate to toss in a recycling bin. Or, you can choose devices that use refillable pods that can be used multiple times. However, most vapers using tanks and coils can recycle defunct components.
What You Can You Do To Reduce Your Vaping Footprint
Besides recycling, there are other ways that individual vapers can reduce their vaping footprint. Is vaping bad for the environment? We have done our best to give you the relative information to make your own determination. But, a vaper interested in reducing waste should start with the obvious. And the obvious is that choosing the best quality vapor products will make a big difference. The better quality products last longer and that is huge.
The mods and vape kits represent the top tier in vaping quality and product quality. Buying cheap or counterfeit devices that do not last is bad for your pocket book and bad for the environment. So the first thing you can do is choose quality. The best news is that quality is affordable. Especially at Apollo.
Here are some other things that you can do:
Buy larger bottles of e-juice. Buying small bottles of e-liquid means that you go through more bottles. 60 ml bottles or larger can last weeks. Plus you get a better value buying in larger quantities.
Extend battery life by never letting batteries drain below 30% capacity. When charging a battery, let it charge fully before removing it from the charger. Do not expose batteries to extreme temperatures. These steps can extend battery longevity dramatically.
Break in coils so that they last longer. To break in a coil, start vaping at a lower power setting and then gradually increase until you get to the desired wattage.
Again, if you can, recycle. If you are vaping and driving, don’t throw your used coils or vape bottles out the window! Recycle when you can.
But cigarettes don’t have batteries. What about those?
Batteries are particularly complicated to dispose of in an environmentally friendly way, but there is a lot vapers can do to minimize their footprint by taking a few simple steps.
Most vaping devices or vape pens use a lithium ion battery, which can often be recharged over and over again, giving the product a reasonably long lifespan. And many places have collection or drop-off schemes in place for used household batteries to be recycled - for example, battery recycling containers can be found across the UK.
A vaper will likely go through more batteries if they use disposable vapes. These are really popular as a convenience product and it’s easy to see why. While a lot of the refillable atomizers or pods and larger batteries have longer life spans, they are less convenient.
In conclusion, vaping represents a reduced strain on the environment when compared to cigarettes. Like other electronic devices, we are getting better all the time at managing the disposal of outdated electronic equipment. Old computers can be recycled. Batteries can be recycled. We are on the right track and as a species, we are always looking to get even better. But we should all absolutely try to do better than littering trillions of cigarette butts every year.
With disposables, it’s pretty much plug and play. It’s critical that vapers don’t move back to smoking, so if disposables are most comfortable for you then better to stick with them. But if you can, move at least partially to a pod-based or refillable system.
How about bottles and cartridges?
Empty bottles, pods, atomizers and cartridges might still have nicotine in them, and you should avoid disposing of these without taking some precautions. The FDA recommends they be handled in the same way as dish soap and other hazardous household items. This includes;
1. Seal used vapes and keep no longer than 90 days before disposal
2· Do not rinse e-liquid from cartridges — it may contaminate water
3· Avoid getting e-liquid on skin
4· Keep vapes away from kids and pets
In addition, larger bottled product formats will naturally contain less plastic for the same amount of vape juice. So you might consider moving to larger product formats if those are available where you are. And finally, some ejuice manufacturers use recycled plastic for their bottles, and some still offer glass.
Fact & Figure Smoking vs Vaping effect on Earth
Tips for more eco-friendly vaping
If you’re hoping to keep your single use plastic consumption down while vaping, we’ve put together our five top tips to help you make more environmentally friendly choices when you vape:
·Make sure you stay off smoking - this is the first and most important rule. Cigarette butts are highly damaging to the environment and it’s almost impossible to dispose of them in an environmentally friendly manner. They’re also pretty bad for your health and frankly best avoided at all costs.
·Vape with reusable batteries where you can - batteries can be reused; and so whether you prefer pre filled pods systems, refillable pod mods or traditional tanks and batteries, use these where you can. In some instances, disposables will be a helpful choice too, but try to keep your use of these to situations where prefilled models aren’t available.
·Use larger format products where available - whether it’s bottled e-liquids or pod based systems, use larger formats where you can. The lower the plastic-to-liquid ratio is in your vaping setup, the less waste plastic you’ll create.
·Dispose of e-liquid safely - nicotine can be harmful to aquatic life, so make sure you don’t pour ejuice down the sink if you can avoid it.
Vaping And The Environment Wrap Up
Smokers, please don’t litter cigarette butts! This is a major problem. The numbers are stunning. Trillions of discarded cigarettes leaching toxins into the soil and water. Let’s do better.
Vapers can recycle the component parts of e-cigarette products as well as plastic and glass e-juice bottles.
That is it for our take on vaping and the environment! Please share this post on your social media and help us get the word out about the problems caused by littering cigarette butts.
