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 A volunteer with Surfrider Foundation, a non-profit group that picks
up trash as part of its mission to protect marine environments,
Castellano says vaping waste is a problem that has become
progressively worse over the last six months.
"You reach down to pick up what you expect to be a seashell and pull
up a little plastic pod with some aluminum and some oil on it," said
Castellano, a 28-year-old building supply manager who lives six
blocks from the boardwalk in Asbury Park.
While data quantifying the extent of the problem is scant,
environmental campaigners are increasingly concerned about the
impact of the explosive growth of e-cigarettes in the United States,
which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control blames for 26 deaths.
In response, groups around the country are beginning to develop
measures to track the amount of vape waste found on beaches, in
parks and in other public spaces.
California, often the state that sets the national agenda, has gone
further, with lawmakers weighing a bill to outlaw vape cartridges
that are not reusable.
"Most people who vape really want to do the right thing but we
haven't made it clear or convenient for them to know what to do,"
said Heidi Sanborn, executive director of the National Stewardship
Action Council, a lobbying group that helped write the California
bill, which has already passed the state Senate.
The legislation, which the Assembly is expected to take up in
January, would require producers to provide user-friendly programs
to recycle reusable vape products, such as free mail-in packages or
drop-off bins at retail locations.
The risks of vape waste are real, experts say. Emptied pods, also
known as cartridges, contain residual nicotine, propylene glycol and
benzoic acid, while vape pens, the battery-operated e-cigarettes
that heat the fluid for vaping, contain lead and mercury that can
leach into soil or sand, said University of California at San
Francisco researcher Yogi Hendlin.
Non-biodegradable cartridges also pose choking hazards for small
children and animals, and endanger ocean creatures that
inadvertently consume the plastics, Hendlin said.
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Vapor Technology Association, the main trade group, declined to
comment. Juul Labs Inc, the vape industry leader 35 percent-owned by
tobacco giant Altria Group Inc [MO.N], did not respond to requests
for comment.
One of the first attempts to quantify the extent of the problem came
in a recent CDC report on litter collected in student parking lots
and other gathering spots outside 12 high schools in the San
Francisco Bay area. The study, by Hendlin and his colleague Jeremiah
Mock, found that e-cigarette waste amounted to 19 percent of trash
related to nicotine or cannabis.
Many of the groups dedicated to cleaning up public spaces count the
number of cigarette butts and other types of trash that volunteers
pick up, but they generally lump vaping waste in the catch-all
"other" category.
Surfriders, based in San Clemente, California, is among those
looking for specific methods to tally the number of discarded vape
products that are finding their way onto beaches.
"It's important to quantify and qualify - or as we call it
'fingerprint' - exactly what's lying on our streets," said Jeff
Kirschner, who developed a free app called Litterati, which uses
artificial intelligence to recognize uploaded photographs of vape
litter.
"Once you have the root cause of the problem, that allows you to
pave the path to a solution," said Kirschner.
On the West Coast, Pam Granger doesn't need a formal study to know
the problem is real. The 70-year-old retired policy director said
the sight of vape waste has marred her recent walks in a wetlands
refuge near her home in Petaluma, California, about 40 miles (64 km)
north of San Francisco.
She recalls stumbling on a dissembled piece of a re-usable vape
tank, finding a nearly full refill bottle and seeing a vape pod in a
playground.
"The grandkids are the ones I'm worried about," Granger said. "I was
horrified."
(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg in New York; Editing by Frank McGurty
and Daniel Wallis)
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