LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Electronic cigarettes, also known as vapes, are presenting a new challenge for Louisville waste officials, as improper disposal methods pose both health and environmental risks.
Vape companies market e-cigarettes as disposable, but there’s almost nowhere to safely throw them away. Karen Maynard, Louisville Metro’s Solid Waste education manager, said, “Vapes are a more recent thing. We actually get calls a lot, like one a week at least. Unfortunately, [that policy is] a little vague right now.”
The EPA classifies vapes as hazardous because of the lithium battery and leftover nicotine. Regulators say they can leak chemicals or spark fires.
Maynard said, “The most dangerous batteries are the lithium-ion batteries. They do pose a fire risk. Especially when, coming in contact with each other or with other materials, it creates a spark. It is common actually for fires to break out in inside a garbage truck or recycling truck or even at a facility where that material is dumped. It’s very important for people to understand that even if a battery is recyclable, it is not recyclable with your regular household recycling, like glass bottles, cans and paper.”
Proper disposal is hard to find and expensive, so people just end up throwing them in the trash and ultimately the landfill. “The options are kind of limited right now. There’s lots of new technology that has batteries inside. Sometimes you can’t even take them out. So, it does get very confusing for residents to understand what to do with a product,” said Maynard.
Maynard said customers can return phone or power tool batteries to the store where they were bought, but that option doesn’t exist for vapes.
Spectrum News called dozens of vape shops in Kentucky asking if their company accepted used vapes for proper disposal. Many said they did not accept them at all, others said they did but that they threw them away in everyday trashcans and recycling bins.
Smurfit Westrock, a recylcing center, caught fire in 2022 because of the combustion of a lithium-ion battery. Bailey Rogers is the general manager at the recycling center and said that over 60 firefighters, four firefighting trucks, and 16 active hours before the fire was put out.
Rogers explained, “We get residential and commercial single stream. That all comes in blended together. Sometimes we come across several batteries or just one at a time. We have wheel-loaders that work to contain those piles, pushing them up to start the processing. Those wheel-loaders are 28,000lbs, and when that machine potentially runs over that lithium battery, that crushing causes that positive and negative charge to ignite, causing basically an explosion.”
Rogers explained that under large piles, like the ones they see at their facility, fire could be smoldering for hours before being noticed by staff.
Rogers said the abundance of vapes over the past few years introduces even more of a threat. “We recover at least 100 a month, I’d say. It’s up to our team to recover those. I think it simply comes down to getting this story out there to let them know that you need to recycle your batteries separate from everything else because it becomes a combustible chain down the line of paper, plastics, metals and those fires are a lot harder to put out once they get started.”
Maynard said Louisville Metro Haz Bin is one place people can go to dispose of their vapes, batteries and other hazardous waste for free. Here, trained workers label and sort the hazardous materials, until it can be safely handled and removed. Maynard’s team is pushing for policies to make sites like this even more accessible.
“It’s not just a Louisville issue, it’s national. Certainly state level. We are working for a solution for Louisville, as any kind of national regulations are formed as well.”
If you have a question or concern on how to manage your trash or waste in the greater Louisville area, Louisville Metro Solid Waste suggests its Recycle Coach app to find locations and hours of operations.
