Australian law enforcement agencies are facing a massive cost blowout and potentially serious public safety issues dealing with the storage and disposal of illicit vapes containing toxic chemicals and unstable lithium batteries.
More than 19 million vapes have been seized by the Australian Border Force and Therapeutic Goods Administration since a ban on the products was introduced more than two years ago.
Hundreds of thousands more have been taken off the street by state law enforcement.
The scale of the haul has been causing significant problems for the agencies, which are facing massive bills for the safe storage and disposal of the dangerous illicit products.
The ABF issued a tender for a vape disposal contract in October 2024, which it estimated would involve processing about 17,000 kilograms of vapes a month nationwide.
That estimate was obsolete almost immediately as the illicit vape market exploded in popularity.
The ABF is actually seizing about 63,000 kilograms a month, on average, since the ban was introduced.
They had to sharply increase the value of the contract from $3.3 million to $13.2 million over the course of the 15-month deal to June 2026 (this figure also includes some disposal of engineered stone).
But three law enforcement and waste industry sources, speaking anonymously to discuss commercial arrangements, say the ABF’s final bill will likely be substantially higher as seizure numbers soar.
Industry operators charge the ABF about $7.20 a kilogram for destruction, with about 10 vapes weighing one kilogram.
In the AFP submission, it said disposal prices were now up to $13 a kilogram.
“For large-scale seizures, these costs quickly become prohibitive, underscoring the increasing pressure on law enforcement resources and the need for more efficient, innovative storage and destruction solutions,” the AFP wrote.
The explosion in the tobacco black market has caught the federal government unprepared to deal with record seizures.
A previous ABF contract for the disposal of all seized tobacco products soared nearly 200 per cent in just three years, from $9.8 million to $29.4 million.
Illicit tobacco and nicotine products like vapes are now a more than $8.5 billion industry for organised crime.
Environmental and regulatory authorities consider vapes to be a dangerous product because of the presence of liquid nicotine, hazardous chemicals like formaldehyde and lithium-ion batteries.
Most vape models are manufactured in China for as little as 80¢ a unit and are made with low-quality materials. As an illegal product in Australia, there are no quality control standards.
The lithium-ion batteries make vapes particularly dangerous because they are prone to self-ignite and are difficult to extinguish when on fire. In 2022, an e-cigarette melting down caused a $50 million fire at a waste facility in Canberra.
A vape also spontaneously burst into flames on a flight from Brisbane to Melbourne in March.
Industry sources have warned that a significant backlog of vapes is building as destruction methods struggle to keep pace with the quantities being seized by state and federal authorities and turned in by consumers at waste stations.
Law enforcement agencies will not discuss the method of storage or disposal of vapes for security reasons but insist that no stockpiling is occurring.
A source with knowledge of the process, but not authorised to speak publicly, said the ABF was having the vapes incinerated at a factory outside Sydney.
The TGA said some of its contractors do “where possible” extract vape components for recycling and reuse.
A number of councils around Australia have begun funding local recycling programs for vapes, but the volumes they can collect are small.
“They are an environmental triple threat – considered e-waste, hazardous waste and plastic waste, making their safe disposal extremely difficult. Even if the batteries are removed the hazardous chemicals prevent them from being recycled through normal recycling services,” the Municipal Association of Victoria said.
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