Apple trees, dog poo – and disposable vapes….

The path that runs down from Hampstead Lane onto the meadows to the east of Kenwood House runs through an area of coppiced hazel. These are young hazel trees that are cut virtually to the ground every five or six years so that each stump regenerates by pushing out another eight or ten branches. These grow pretty vertical and straight and, in another five to six years, will be ready to be cut and used for fencing. If you look on the left of the image you will see some of this fencing. It runs down either side of the path although a lot of it has now been fairly comprehensively grown through by ivy, cow parsley and wild celandines. According to the two rangers who were planting the trees that you can see in the barrow, this may well be the only bit of  traditional hazel coppicing within the M25.

I had stopped to investigate (on my way back from an extremely chilly and soggy Heath Hands session on Sandy Heath) as it looked as though they were planting trees – as indeed they were. Not more hazels but old varieties of apples it seems. So the hazel coppice is to become a hazel coppice orchard.

Happy to stop for a chat, they were telling me about the coppicing when I touched a sore nerve by complementing them on their fencing – sturdy enough to keep out the ever growing number of dogs on the heath.

Pooh bags

It was not the dogs that set them off but the dogs’ pooh-bagging owners. While the majority, as always, are good citizens and dispose of the pooh bags as they should, there are a minority who chuck them off the path into the wild life areas or into the ponds, hang them on gate posts, drop them on the ground and, worst of all, chuck them into the recycling bins. This is especially frustrating as one bag of dog pooh in a large recycling bin pollutes the whole binful and means that the lot has to go to landfill.

But if abandoned dog pooh raises the blood pressure of the rangers, don’t get them started on disposable vapes…..

Disposable vapes

Being neither a smoked nor a vaper, I had not really logged how much of an environmental nightmare these were becoming. According to the campaigning group Material Focus:

• Sales of disposable single-use vapes are now around 138 million per annum.
• Of which at least 1.3 million were littered and binned each week last year.
• Disposable vapes contain lithium (in the battery), copper and stainless steel all of which are lost forever if they are not recycled.
• The lost lithium alone equates to 10 tonnes of lithium a year, equivalent to the batteries inside 1,200 electric vehicles.
• The lost copper would provide enough copper for over 200,000 EV charging stations.

To compound the problem, vapes are not easy to recycle. They are classed as waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) but need to be disassembled to be safely disposed of. And, if damaged when thrown away, lithium batteries can cause fires at waste disposal plants.

Around 90% of the smaller vape and vape juice producers in the UK seem to be failing to comply with environmental/recycling regulations by which they are legally obliged to finance the take back, collection and treatment of electrical products when they become waste. Larger vape producers and importers are not covering the true costs of collection and recycling as vapes are falling under normal small electricals rather than their own special category. They maintain that recycling advice and regulations are unclear – which is true but is scarcely an excuse.

Consumer responsibility

However, vapers do also have a responsibility here although, according to various vox pops in this ITV news item,  it would seem that most are simply not aware that this is an issue.

Material Focus are calling on disposable single-use vape consumers to put pressure on retailers to make it possible for them to drop off their vapes in store.

Recycling your vape

• In theory you can recyle your vapes at local recyling centres although when I went onto their on line sites they recognised neither ‘vapes’ nor ‘disposable vapes’.
• There is a vape recycling service which provides dedicated vape recyle bins although they do seem for now to be primarily in London.
• A company called Waste Experts is also offering to help although they appear to be focused on industry rather than consumers.
• More advice on the VapeClub site and no doubt a bit of Googling will find others.

For more check the Material Focus website.

If you are interested there is also a change.org petition calling for more regulation to get vaping products classified as tobacco products, hidden away from open display in shops in an attempt to reduce the number of 11-18 year-olds who are using them.

However, to return to my rangers…….

As with the dog pooh, they find disposable vapes thrown away all over the heath. This is bad enough but worse is that vapers (possibly with good recycling intentions but little knowledge) also throw them into the recycling bins. But because they contain batteries and lithium (apart from copper, stainless steel and plastic) and can cause fires at disposal plants, once again a whole bin of recycling has to go to landfull. Not only a waste of landfill space but also a waste of all those valuable raw materials.