Fires in bin lorries and waste sorting centres cost at least €100 million in the last three years, and the waste industry believes vapes are largely to blame.
The Irish Waste Management Association said the true cost is probably considerably higher as companies are seeing insurance premiums spiral.
Fires in sorting facilities cost €56.6 million from 2023-2025 and two of the damaged plants remain out of action.
A further €1.7 million was lost in damage to vehicles, according to an association survey to which two-thirds of its 37-member firms replied.
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An additional €26.3 million was spent on installing extra fire detection and suppression equipment.
Association secretary Conor Walsh said companies were also having to spend more time picking vapes out of rubbish bags before they became compressed and potentially ignited.
With an estimated 30 million vapes disposed of in household and on-street litter bins each year, the association said the situation is no longer sustainable.
“Realistically, the cost is probably €70 million a year because I haven’t brought in insurance costs, and if it’s a cost to the waste industry, it’s ultimately a cost to society,” said Walsh.
Vapes contain lithium-ion batteries, which are meant to be disposed of at WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) collection points but only 1.1 million of the disposable vapes sold in Ireland annually are returned in this way.
A ban on single-use disposable vapes is due later this year. But Walsh said, based on the experience in Britain, this will make the situation potentially even more dangerous.
“It should make a move from disposable vapes to reusable vapes, but that’s not happening,” he said.
“They’re going from single-use disposable vapes to multi-use disposable vapes. They’re being thrown into bins fully charged, so instead of having 30 million depleted vapes going into bins, we’ll have five to six million fully charged vapes in the bins.”
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The association said a deposit return scheme for vapes or a discount at the point of sale for every used vape returned would encourage responsible disposal.
“You’ve got to get people bringing the vapes back to the vape shops,” said Walsh.
“The question we ask is where is the producer responsibility because all we’re seeing is irresponsibility from producers.”
The Public Health (Single-Use Vapes) Bill, making its way through the Oireachtas, is designed to reduce vaping among children by removing cheap purchases from the shelves and it does not specifically address the environmental consequences.
The Department of the Environment said, however, it had engaged with the association and producer responsibility organisations “in order to develop solutions tailored to the needs of the waste management sector”.
Responsible Vaping Ireland, an industry group representing vape shops and sellers, has been contacted for comment.
