The U.K. is taking steps to ban disposable vapes in an effort to protect children’s health, responding to the rising use among teenagers.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced on Monday the plan to ban disposable vapes to protect children’s health.
Even though selling any vape to individuals under 18 is already prohibited, the government believes that the disposable nature, diverse flavors, and distinctive appearance of recently introduced products in the U.K. market are significant factors contributing to the alarming increase in youth vaping.
There has been a threefold increase in the number of children using vapes over the past three years, according to recent data shared by the U.K. government. Among younger children, the trend is also on the rise, with 9% of 11 to 15-year-olds currently using vapes.
A similar one, biodegradable plastic is actually worse than regular plastic.
Plastic is poly-ethylene (or some other poly-something), which means you basically have a repeating ethylene molecule over and over. Biodegradable plastic simply has starch inserted in the chain every so often, which is then digested by bacteria and broken down into small plastic pieces - also known as microplastics. Instedad of having a big piece of plastic you can see, which isn’t great but at least it’s all in one place, you have a lot of tiny microscopic plastics you can’t see being spread through the enivornment and into food chains.
Wait wait wait. Tell me more. I’ve been using these but never did any research - are they really not biodegradable?
I mean, they might biodegrade, eventually, but “flushable” is taken by most people to mean that it breaks up when flushed but actually it’s an industry invented term to mean it passed a test of their own devising. The problem is, this test doesn’t mimic real world flushing conditions and so the “flushable” wipes don’t actually break up when flushed, so help contribute to things like fatbergs.
It was on a telly program about products and they demonstrated it there. I doubt I could unearth it but there’s plenty of pages online describing the issue, like this.
It’s like when companies make a big fuss about how their clothes are made from recycled plastic bottles - so eco! - but instead of plastic bottles in the seas, it’s now microfibres from your clothing shedding into the washing machine and entering the water that way. I wish there was more movement towards hemp fabric.
