The PR spark that lit a nationwide vape ban

Three years ago, a piece of research was commissioned on the environmental timebomb posed by single-use vapes.

The result of that work was debated internationally before it triggered a law change with disposable vapes, banned from sale in the UK this 1 June. 

Quite the win for any PR campaign – and the firm behind it, Material Focus, an  independent not-for-profit organisation working to improve the recycling of electricals, was rightly proud. But, as the in-house consultant PR behind the research, Kate Hinton says, triggering a law change was never the endgame. 

“We weren’t out to ban these things, the objective was to shed a light on an issue the research threw up; that while they delivered 600 puffs they would last for about 1,000 years in the soil.” And it was that detail which made the subject prime campaign material. 

No stranger to environmental issues, Hinton has worked in senior communication roles with the Environment Agency through to London First, leading award-winning campaigns on air pollution. She influenced the Treasury to introduce one of the first tax incentives for cleaner fuels and technologies for cars, and also launched the UK’s first biodiesel blend.

Electrical waste or e-waste is considered the fastest-growing waste stream in the world. And, as the commissioned researched showed, vapes were contributing to the problem on a massive scale – with single-use vapes being the worst offender.

Vapes are nothing new: it’s widely accepted the product we know today was invented in 2003 by Chinese pharmacist Hon Lik, who had wanted to kick the smoking habit that killed his father. Imperial Tobacco bought Hon’s vape patents in 2013. 

The product has been re-imagined many times over and initially was hailed as a gateway product to help smokers quit. It wasn’t until the late 2010s that single-use vapes came into the market. 

As for the campaign which paved the way for law change in just three years, it was based on a hunch Hinton had in lockdown. “It started out as a fact-finding mission. I’d had a random email from a student about vape sales and I thought that perhaps the bigger issue here was the environmental impact of not recycling them” – a topic which ties in seamlessly with Material Focus’ mission around recycling electricals. 

Explosive research

The £2,500 research project into the environmental impact of single-use vapes was explosive. It revealed:

• Five million single-use vapes were either littered or thrown away in general waste every week, and that more than 40 tonnes of lithium were discarded in single-use vapes.
• Many vapes contain lithium-ion batteries, posing fire risks and leaching toxic chemicals into the environment when binned incorrectly.
• 13 vapes every second were being incorrectly disposed
• It’s a significant fire risk as lithium batteries are known to cause fires when crushed with general waste.

Initially Material Focus took the research to the Daily Telegraph, Sky and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. All of them ran with it but Hinton was surprised it didn’t go bigger.

A month later she took a call from the BBC and the story ran again. “That’s when it mushroomed and that was when we realised we had something huge, but we had to be careful… Material Focus’ key message is around the need to recycle electricals, we had to be sure that didn’t get totally lost in the noise about vapes, or that we were thought of as a vape organisation, which we’re not,” she says.

“The campaign was very, very fast moving but the make-up of our organisation meant we were able to jump on the moment and make it our own.”

In response to the media storm that followed, Material Focus built bespoke content packages, created briefing papers for producers, documents for retailers on how they could fulfil their regulatory requirements around recycling, and produced information on where consumers could find recycling points. 

Without even a catchy moniker, the campaign sprinted its way quickly to worldwide headlines, got political pick-up – and gained serious traction. The PR firm’s research acted as the catalyst for the ban, but the call for legislation was tabled by a consortium led by Green Alliance, who cited the hazard to both environment, wildlife and the health of the increasing numbers of young people using them. 

As Hinton says, “We hadn’t set out to have a campaign to ban vapes. The research had been a spark of an idea, I thought let’s see how much of a problem this is… [and] it kind of steamrolled from there.”

The call for law change was taken on board by Rishi Sunak’s government – but would ultimately be implemented under Keir Starmer’s Labour. 

The real win

“We’ve never been pro or against the ban,” says Hinton. “At Material Focus we don’t do policy campaigning. But we’ve always said that we do need a whole package of measures to make sure this issue gets effectively addressed – a ban won’t solve the problem.”

For Material Focus the bigger issue is to get retailers to comply with recycling requirements. Her solution to keep the story running and relevant was to keep refreshed quality content on offer, including detail on both consumer and retailer recycling of vapes, along with other electricals.

The real win, she says, is the explosion in the number of recycling points for electrical goods which have grown from a couple of thousand to over 30,000 since 2022.

“The ban is a huge step in the right direction, but all the other solutions need to be in place as well. Vape producers also need to fulfil their recycling obligation. We’ve identified that 90% of vape producers aren’t complying with the existing environmental regulations… they need to contribute towards funding the recycling of vapes – and they’re still not doing that.” 

The broader impact of the single-use vapes ban has been a raised awareness about fast tech, as well as the accompanying environmental issues. While another bonus from the campaign is that Material Focus is now seen as a true authority in the field. “It really opened the door,” she says. “It’s given us the platform to talk about other key subjects and it’s built-up knowledge, awareness and respect for us as an organisation as the source of information on the broader topic.”

In the weekend before the ban was put in place Material Focus’ research and opinions on the subject was featured in over 850 pieces of media coverage worldwide. 

As for Hinton’s advice on how to launch a campaign that will result in law change? “Robust evidence helps drive legislative change,” she says. 

“PR alone won’t trigger law change. My mantra has always been that the most effective campaigns work well when you integrate what you do from PR with a public affairs side of things. That’s where you deliver the most powerful impact campaigns.

“In terms of trying to get the coverage into the media, don’t give up! Because initially we had some fantastic coverage, but the story didn’t roll. So if you think something’s a good idea and you’ve got some great coverage, but you haven’t quite got what you want – keep pushing.” 

Joely Carey is an award-winning magazine editor and journalist who devised the Right to Know campaign, which went on to be adopted into law as the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme also known as Clare’s Law, in memory of Clare Wood who was murdered by her ex-boyfriend in 2009.

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