The Government's ban on disposable vapes has been in place for around a month now, so I thought it would be worth taking stock to see if the ban has been successful by any measure so far, as well as investigating the impact on retailers - some of which I'm sure is yet to come.
The intention of the regulations is to stem the tide of disposable vape products being discarded in huge numbers on our streets. Rechargeable and refillable vapes are intended to be used several times, so people should in theory keep hold of them longer. And as they're more obviously electrical products, the idea is that they'll be more likely to be recycled when people have finished with them rather than being thrown away. The danger of course, is that if customers aren't really paying attention to whether they're rechargeable or not and their previous behaviour was to throw the vape away when it ran out of puffs, it's very unlikely that they'll change course without some kind of intervention or education.
Another reason why people may be inclined to throw away the new devices they purchase is the availability of refills. The regulations state that refills for the products sold have to be available on the market, but don't have to be available in the same shop that the device itself is sold in. There are clearly benefits to being able to offer pods or refills to customers to secure that repeat business and loyalty from customers, but for some it will create an unintentional barrier for customers. The feedback that we've had from retailers so far is that the pods are really difficult to get hold of, so the refillable devices that they're selling are being effectively turned into disposables because they can't find a way to use them more than once.
We're also not naïve to the fact that plenty of people are still finding and using disposable vapes on the illicit market. Tackling rogue traders has been a major battle in recent years and the disposables ban has given them another opportunity to appeal to people looking for cheap product. Responsible retailers have told us that in some areas their vape sales have taken a major hit since the introduction of the ban, so it's not unreasonable to assume that those people have either stockpiled or are finding disposables elsewhere. We know that Trading Standards don't have the resources to stop every criminal selling illicit product, but the Government committed more funding in the recent Spending Review for enforcement, so hopefully the numbers of rogue traders will decline sooner than later.
Overall, it looks as though the first month of the ban has created more problems than solutions. Lack of availability of pods, lack of awareness of devices being able to be reused, concerning sales figures, and very little messaging from Government to consumers explaining the importance of recycling the product. We're keen to hear from you as well about how the ban has affected your business, both in terms of sales and number of vapes being recycled, so get in touch with one of the team and let us know.
