‘High street shops and convenience stores are today (Tuesday 1 April) being urged to deplete their stocks of single-use vapes ahead of new legislation coming into force banning their sale.

The deadline for selling any remaining single-use vapes was confirmed as 1 June 2025 when legislation was laid in parliament last year, with a government consultation showing overwhelming support for restricting their sale and supply

Waste Minister Mary Creagh said:

‘For too long, single-use vapes have littered our streets, wasted valuable resources and harmed wildlife.

‘Our ban comes into force in just a few weeks so businesses must play their part by running down stocks and ensuring the remainder are collected for recycling.

‘The Government is committed to moving towards a more circular economy, where we use, repair and refill things for longer, to reduce waste’

Read the full release at Gov.uk

A BBC article highlights that ‘organised criminal groups are targeting the waste industry and “wreaking havoc” on the environment, according to the Environment Agency (EA).

The EA said investigations were “complex” and involved the agency, the police and local authorities.

If I hire a skip, is it possible to make sure my waste will be disposed of in the proper way?

There are checks that I can carry out online to find out if the company I choose has a waste carrier’s licence, but waste can go through a chain of other handlers for processing and government figures suggest nearly 20% of all waste operators are thought to engage in illegal activity.’

In order to ‘reduce the ability for waste criminals to operate and undercut legitimate businesses through their systemic mis-handling of waste, illegal exports, and flytipping’, Government intends to launch mandatory digital waste tracking in April 2026.

In the meantime, see our Advice page to reduce the risk of giving your waste to criminals and together we can reduce the environmental harms caused by waste crime.

‘At the head of beautiful Loch Long in Argyll sits one of Scotland’s biggest plastic problems.

About 62,000 items wash up on the beach each year, much of it from the waterways in and around Glasgow, Scotland’s largest city.

Campaigners say the only solution is to stop the waste entering the water in the first place – and that the introduction of a deposit return scheme for bottles and cans would play a major role in doing just that.’

BBC News

‘In the past ten years our surveyors have walked 1,140 miles across England assessing the litter on our streets: where it is, what it is, and how much of it there is.’

This new report published by Keep Britain Tidy ‘exposes the alarming scale of England’s litter crisis and its disproportionate impact on the nations most deprived communities’

The report also identifies ‘overwhelming public support for prevention measures to tackle the problem,  including  anti-littering campaigns’ and the positive steps being taken by Government to reduce the amount of litter dropped.

 

‘Three men were arrested near Peterborough on 21 January, as part of an investigation into large-scale, organised deposits of waste across counties including Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire.

Waste criminals have been known to dump bales of waste in rural locations to conceal them as farming bales. We are appealing to landowners, businesses, and members of the public to report any plastic-wrapped bales they see in suspicious places, which are unlikely to be silage or hay stored by farmers or equestrian facilities.’

Find out more at Gov.uk