UK Recycling Fires Top 1,500 a Year as Waste Firms Push a £5 Vape Deposit
The sale ban took effect in 2025. The fires did not stop.
If you manage a recycling centre in the UK, you already know the fire alarm sound too well. Discarded vapes and their lithium batteries are sparking more than ten fires a week at recycling sites, according to the industry’s own trade body, and the sale ban that took effect last year hasn’t stopped it. Waste operators are now pushing a specific fix: a cash deposit on every vape sold.
The Environment Services Association, which represents UK waste and recycling companies, reported 1,518 fires across its members’ sites in the year to March 2026, with 541 of them directly attributed to lithium-ion batteries and a further 216 battery fires in bin lorries. The ESA says the true number is likely higher, since the cause often can’t be determined; it estimates 40% of recycling-centre fires are battery-related, but believes the real figure is closer to 70%. The sale of single-use vapes has been illegal across the UK, including Northern Ireland, since June 1, 2025, but the ban only stops new sales — it doesn’t remove the millions of disposable vapes already in circulation or being discarded incorrectly. The ESA calculates these fires now cost the UK about £1 billion a year, up from £150 million in 2021, and is calling for a mandatory £5 deposit scheme on vape sales.
For your facility, the ban didn’t solve the problem it was meant to solve. Vapes thrown into general waste bins still get crushed by collection vehicles and sorting machinery, and a punctured lithium battery can ignite in seconds. Until a funded collection and disposal system exists specifically for vapes, your crews are absorbing the fire risk and your facility is absorbing the equipment damage, with no dedicated financial support tied to the scale of the problem.
The deposit scheme waste companies want
How a £5 Vape Deposit Would Work
Biffa’s proposed deposit would work like a bottle-return scheme: shoppers pay an extra amount, likely up to £5, when they buy a vape, and get it back when they return the spent device to a shop or collection point. The idea is to give people a direct financial reason to return vapes instead of binning them, which could reduce the number of batteries entering general waste streams. Patrick Brighty, the ESA’s head of recycling policy, said battery fires are “reaching epidemic proportions across Britain’s recycling and waste industry, placing workers at risk and threatening vital infrastructure.”
Ban vs Fires — Two Tracks
Why the June 2025 ban didn’t fix the fire problem
The ban targets retailers, stopping the sale and supply of vapes that aren’t rechargeable and refillable. It says nothing about the vapes already sitting in drawers, bins, and street litter, or about how safely they get collected once someone throws one away. Retailers are legally required to offer a take-back service for any vapes customers return, including leftover banned stock, under existing electrical waste rules. But there’s no equivalent, funded system specifically for the millions of vapes UK households discard directly into general waste rather than returning to a shop.
Cost of Fires: 2021 vs 2026
Karmactive has covered how battery-powered consumer devices are creating new categories of waste-industry risk, and vapes are one of the clearest examples. For related coverage, see our articles on the UK disposable vape ban and battery fire risks and the Neasden waste facility fire in northwest London.
The waste industry’s own numbers show the ban and the fire problem are running on separate tracks. Sales stopped in June 2025, but ESA’s fire data covers the year to March 2026 — nine months after the ban was already in force — and shows the fire rate holding at over ten incidents a week. That gap between “banned to buy” and “still causing fires” is the exact evidence gap a deposit scheme is designed to close.
Are disposable vapes still legal in the UK?
The June 2025 sale ban stopped new single-use vapes reaching shop shelves, but it hasn’t stopped recycling-centre fires from batteries already in the waste stream, which the ESA says now cost the UK about £1 billion a year. Waste companies including Biffa and the ESA itself are pushing a vape deposit scheme as the next step, though it would require formal government consultation before becoming policy.
Primary sources: GOV.UK single-use vape ban guidance; Environment Services Association data
