Is Vaping Safer For The Environment?

Smoking cigarettes has had a hugely negative impact on the environment. Is vaping any better? It is, and for many good reasons! Here’s why the vaping device you use is safer for the environment and how you can make it a more eco-friendly experience!

How Vaping Is Safer For The Environment

Vaping has a dramatically-reduced toxic burden compared to cigarettes and other nicotine devices. Vaping rigs use a small amount of power to turn an e-juice, sometimes containing nicotine, into a smooth vapour to be inhaled by the user. It simulates smoking but without the smoke – and the ash, tar, and waste – that comes with cigarettes.

How “green” your vape is can depend on the type of device you choose. Most vapes can be used many times and for years on end, with only having to swap out the wicks and refilling the e-juice. These are more environmentally-friendly than going through many single-use products.

Vapes produce vapour – a diffusion of particles in the gas phase – and as such, don’t produce smoke. It makes vapes much less risky for non-users and localized air quality. Many users choose to vape to give up cigarettes, which is both good for their health and the air around them. But it’s also good for the environment as a whole!

The Environmental Cost of Cigarettes

The cigarette and tobacco industry’s carbon footprint is more than entire countries, and many countries have borne the costs of increased demand. Believe it or not, the land devoted to tobacco growth is increasing, and the resulting deforestation has many environmental consequences, including massive soil erosion, a loss of biodiversity, water pollution, and increased levels of carbon dioxide. Growing tobacco also uses many chemical additives, such as pesticides and fertilizers. 

It’s not just the dried, shredded tobacco in cigarettes that harm the planet – the cigarettes themselves also have an impact. Cigarette butts are made from non-biodegradable cellulose acetate, and often carry in them toxins like arsenic, lead, nicotine and ethyl phenol, which can leach into soil and water. Butts are the most commonly discarded piece of waste and picked-up item of litter on beaches and water edges worldwide in the world. The World Health Organization calculates that, if each filter weighs 170 milligrams, the weight of all filter waste is about 175,200 tonnes!

All cigarette smokers should be disposing of their butts safely, but they should also be encouraged to give it up in the first place! A vaping device, even a disposable one, can take the place of hundreds of cigarettes. 

How You Can Be An Environmentally-Friendly Vaper

There are ways you can make vaping more environmentally friendly. Most vaping devices use lithium-ion batteries, and users can recharge these rather than use single-use models (and get the cost savings from their longer lifespan). When the time comes to change your battery or device, make sure you recycle the old ones in a designated battery recycling receptacle rather than putting it in with your general household waste.

If vaping is a long-term activity or hobby for you rather than a form of quitting smoking, invest in a refillable vaping device. You can reduce your single-waste product usage while getting a fuller, richer vaping experience!