Mass disposal of vapes poses public risk, says local health expert
Posted May 13, 2026 03:10:26 PM.
Last Updated May 13, 2026 03:34:39 PM.
While the prevalence of vape products continues to rise among Canadians aged 15 and older, efforts to safely dispose of these products have not remained proportionate.
Like many at-home electronic devices, such as power tools and laptops, most vapes use rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. When these batteries are punctured by contact, they can pose a fire risk and sometimes allow battery acid to seep into the ground, contaminating the area and posing a public safety risk.
Phil Wong, operations director of health protection with Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health, expressed the danger that regular garbage disposal of vapes can cause.
Wong said in an interview with The Mike Farwell Show that vapes create “Potential fire issues with the garbage trucks that pick them up. And they just end up in the landfill; there is actually no way we can find to dispose of them at a public level.”
The Government of Canada reported that 1.5 million Canadians used vapes in the a past month in 2021, with roughly 700,000 of them reporting daily use. That number is expected to be rising, but Wong says an estimate based on this data is the only way to know how many devices are ending up in the trash.
“We actually don’t have an idea of exactly how many vapes are going into the landfill. We know that they are not being collected properly, and likely that with all the vape stores and vendors within our region that are selling, they must be all going somewhere,” he explained.
Wong says that the products can be collected by third-party companies, but they need to be organized into bulk collections, a task unfeasible for most municipal public health groups.
He says the onus is on vape manufacturers as well as parties at the national level to solve the crisis, rather than leaving solutions to municipal public health organizations.
“The products are approved by the federal government, so something at the federal level. At the local level where our health unit operates, there’s not much we can do other than advocacy,” he said.
