Currently, disposable e‑cigarettes collected in Estonia are gathered and sent abroad to a processing partner, but waste handlers argue it would be more sensible to incinerate them instead. The Ministry of Climate does not support that approach.
Last year, waste handler Eesti Elektroonikaromu collected 6.3 tons of used e‑cigarettes. That amount represents only about 1.5 percent of all e‑cigarettes that end up in Estonia’s household waste stream each year — even though they should not be disposed of with regular trash.
To prevent this, collection boxes are available in public spaces and in some stores.
Nicorex Baltic CEO Diane Sirelpuu said the company has placed collection boxes in all Veipland stores and with its partners.
“Several fuel‑station chains take them back — including Terminal and Alexela — as well as alcohol retailers like Superalko and Cityalko. Many resellers who handle and sell these products have collection boxes,” Sirelpuu said.
She noted that more than half of the waste mass from e‑cigarettes comes from illegal products. That means part of the market operates without producer responsibility, waste‑management funding, or legal reporting, leaving some disposal costs to society.
All waste collected in the boxes is sent to a producer‑responsibility partner, which handles further processing.
Kaur Kuurme, board member of Eesti Elektroonikaromu, said the treatment method for disposable e‑cigarettes differs from reusable ones. Reusable devices can be opened easily and the battery removed. In disposable devices, however, the battery is difficult to separate.
“It requires a lot of manual work. Usually it means breaking the device with a hammer to get the battery out. You also can’t put it directly into a shredder, because the moment the battery sparks, the fire risk is extremely high,” Kuurme said.
Such manual work is expensive and inefficient, he added.
Currently, disposable e‑cigarettes are collected and sent to a processing partner in Lithuania. “Given how irrational this process is, we proposed to the ministry that perhaps disposable e‑cigarettes could instead be recycled through incineration,” Kuurme said.
Piret Otsason, head of producer responsibility and hazardous waste at the Ministry of Climate, said the handling of batteries in disposable e‑cigarettes is governed by uniform EU‑wide requirements. She added that Europe has the capacity to process them.
Otsason said batteries and accumulators must not be burned because they contain valuable materials such as lithium and other metals. Critical raw materials are limited in availability, and mining them has significant environmental impacts. The goal is to return these materials to circulation for use in new batteries and other products.
Kuurme countered that the amount of recoverable material in e‑cigarettes is minimal and has little practical value.
“From what we’ve seen in Central Europe, once a company separates the lithium battery from e‑cigarettes, no processor wants them — they still end up being burned. There’s no point in us trying to be pioneers here,” he said.
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