UK Vaping Industry Association Launches Sustainable Vaping Week

The UK Vaping Industry Association has started its fourth Sustainable Vaping Week, a campaign built around the disposal of used e-cigarettes, and it has used the week to renew a broader call for a regulated, licensed trading environment for the category.

The week's focus is on what happens to a used device. The association has put the responsible disposal of the products at the center of the campaign, encouraging users and retailers to look at how a spent e-cigarette, with its battery, plastic and metal parts, should leave the product's life, and to push for the collection and recycling of the material rather than its disposal as general waste. The fourth running of the campaign means the disposal message is now an established part of the association's public program rather than a new one.

Alongside the recycling push, the association has restated a position it describes as a Fair Deal for Vaping, which pairs the industry's own responsibility for disposal with a set of rules it wants applied to the whole trade. The package includes a licensing scheme for vape retailers, so that the shops that sell the products are themselves licensed and checked, and a stronger enforcement effort against products that do not meet the rules or that are sold outside them.

The pairing is the argument the association is making: that a well-run licensed trade, with a disposal obligation, is preferable to the current mix of compliant and non-compliant product, and that the recycling infrastructure it is promoting needs the licensing underneath to work. The week is one vehicle for the message, and the licensing and enforcement calls are the durable part of the position the association is pressing on the government.

The campaign lands at a point when the disposal question is moving from a side issue to a real operational one, as the volume of products in the channel grows. The association is trying to get ahead of it, with a recycling push and a licensing ask, in the same effort.