Campaigners are demanding urgent action as research claims 250 MILLION disposable vapes will be thrown away before the 2025 UK ban.

Recycling experts slammed vaping bosses for what they say is their continued failure to comply with eco regulations by offering vape “takeback” services in-store.

Research by Material Focus found barely one in ten shops selling e-cigs offered the recycling services required by law.

And its new study warned without swift steps to address this, the UK will be swamped by a shocking quarter of a billion wrongly-disposed vapes before they’re banned on April 1 next year.

From a spot check of 764 shops across the UK by researchers, vape drop-off points were available in just a third of specialist vape retailers.

And shockingly, high street brands and convenience stores provided very little or zero recycling drop-off points for vapes.

It comes after the Daily Record’s Bin the Vapes campaign to outlaw polluting single-use vapes scored a huge victory when details of the ban were announced last month.

But Scottish Green MSP Gillian Mackay – the first politician to champion the Record’s campaign – warned with over a year to go until the ban, we still face a vapes litter nightmare in our streets, parks and beaches.

Mackay said: “Disposable vapes will finally be banned next year.

“But before that happens hundreds of millions of them will be thrown away, littering our streets, rivers, parks and beaches with plastic and dangerous lithium batteries.

“Retailers and producers must take their responsibility to the environment and their communities seriously.

“The pursuit of private profit margins can’t come at everyone else’s expense.”

She added: “It’s extremely disappointing to see that so many, including nearly all high street brands and convenience stores, have so far failed in those responsibilities.”

About 360 million disposable vapes are sold per year with 5 million thrown away every week in Britain – equivalent to eight per second.

Vapes contain a range of precious materials, including lithium and copper – with those sold in the UK containing enough lithium to power the batteries of 6700 electric cars, Material Focus said.

It said if all these vapes were financed to be recycled by producers – as they should be by law – this would cost the vaping industry up to £200million a year.

Scott Butler, Executive Director of Material Focus, warned single-use vapes are among “the most environmentally wasteful, damaging and dangerous consumer products ever made”.

He added: “As sales and profits have boomed, the environmental impacts and costs of collecting and recycling waste vapes have been disregarded.

“With the forthcoming ban on single-use vapes due to be implemented in 2025 it is vital that the quarter of a billion plus vapes that could be thrown away in the run up to the ban are instead collected for recycling.”

John Dunne, boss of the UK Vaping Industry Association, said: “These figures are very concerning and more needs to be done – not just by retailers who must shoulder their responsibility, but also government and regulators.”

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