{"id":571788,"date":"2025-11-15T10:03:22","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T10:03:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/571788\/"},"modified":"2025-11-15T10:03:22","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T10:03:22","slug":"how-britains-disposable-vape-ban-has-boosted-ukraines-war-effort","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/571788\/","title":{"rendered":"How Britain\u2019s Disposable Vape Ban Has Boosted Ukraine\u2019s War Effort"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since the UK banned single-use vapes<\/strong><\/a> in June over health and environmental concerns, Viacheslav Semeniuk has had his work cut out extracting thousands of batteries from the devices to send to Ukraine, where they are made into power banks for frontline troops.<\/p>\n

The Ukrainian volunteer, who has lived in Leeds, a city in northern England, for the past decade, says UK producers of e-cigarettes \u201ccan\u2019t sell them anymore so basically we\u2019re just helping to make [manufacturers and retailers\u2019] lives easier, because they need to do something with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A sign in Leeds advertising disposable vapes before the devices were banned.<\/p>\n

A recent delivery of four pallets of brand new vapes to the Leeds Ukrainian Community Association<\/strong><\/a>, which Semeniuk co-founded in 2022, adds up to more than 10,000 individual devices which he and a small band of volunteers are currently working through.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe gather together in my house or whoever\u2019s house it is and then we sit maybe watching a movie or drinking wine,\u201d Semeniuk says of the sessions breaking down vape pens. \u201cIt\u2019s like a family evening.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Viacheslav<\/p>\n

Viacheslav Semeniuk (left) with a fellow volunteer preparing for a session of dismantling disposable vapes.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere in the UK, entrepreneur Tom Nabielec has collected unwanted vapes to be donated to the Ukrainian Social Club in London, which also ships batteries to Ukraine. He confirmed to RFE\/RL that disposable e-cigarettes are now relatively easy to source from shops free of charge. \u201cIt costs [retailers] money to recycle otherwise and here in the UK they must by law.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nabielec says he was given vapes from one retail outlet, which soon \u201cspread the word to the other shops in their small chain\u201d about the potential to donate stockpiles to Ukrainian charities.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A woman in a Lviv workshop taping vape batteries sent from Leeds into a stack that will be placed into a powerbank.<\/p>\n

Semeniuk says the vapes are broken down in the UK to avoid customs fees when travelling through Europe and into Ukraine, a lesson learned the hard way when one shipment of e-cigarettes that had not been dismantled was turned back on the Dutch border. The driver, \u201chad to return from the Netherlands to Leeds to unload them and then turn around and drive back again,\u201d the Ukrainian says.<\/p>\n

\"Vape<\/p>\n

Vape batteries on their way to Ukraine being sorted into different sizes.<\/p>\n

Transporting potentially resellable vape devices internationally requires tax fees and extensive importation paperwork. However, “waste\u201d products such as boxes of loose batteries that Semeniuk and other volunteers are extracting can be carried across borders without such bureaucratic friction.<\/p>\n

The batteries are taped up for the journey across Europe to reduce the risk of fire that can occur when exposed battery terminals touch and short circuit.<\/p>\n

\"Power<\/p>\n

Power banks made from British vape batteries photographed in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Once inside Ukraine, the batteries are glued into 3D-printed power bank shells by teams which Semeniuk works with in Lviv. The rugged, rechargeable finished product features mutiple power outlets. Frontline soldiers use the powerbanks for \u201cwhatever USB-powered devices there are,\u201d Semeniuk says.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A Ukrainian soldier with one of the power banks made from British vape batteries.<\/p>\n

On the Russian side of the ongoing war in Ukraine, vape users are being asked to donate e-cigarettes<\/strong><\/a> for their batteries and wiring. \u201cOne e-cigarette = one drop from a drone onto the enemy!\u201d one poster in a university in the southwestern Russian city of Samara proclaimed. Small servomotors used to drop munitions from drones can be powered by a single disposable vape battery.<\/p>\n

\"Discarded<\/p>\n

Discarded e-cigarettes.<\/p>\n

Use of e-cigarettes has exploded over the past decade, with an estimated 100 million users worldwide. The devices, which heat nicotine-containing liquid to produce vapor, are thought to be less harmful than cigarettes<\/a> but still carry significant health risks. The UK government flagged the environmental issues of single-use vapes as a major factor in banning the devices.<\/p>\n

According to one report<\/strong><\/a>, <\/strong>e-cigarettes discarded in the UK each year contain enough lithium to create 5,000 electric car batteries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since the UK banned single-use vapes in June over health and environmental concerns, Viacheslav Semeniuk has had his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":571789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[2000,299,126,332,6323,67989,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-571788","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-features","11":"tag-russia","12":"tag-russia-invades-ukraine","13":"tag-the-rundown-headline","14":"tag-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115553148620519588","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/571789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}