The average store offering Elfbar’s vape recycling bins is receiving 1,000 devices returned per month, the company has revealed. 

The disposable vape supplier began rolling out its recycling programme in April, with 140 stores taking part in the initial trial. The recent expansion to over 1,000 recycling bins across the UK represents the second phase of the programme, building upon insights garnered from the first trial stage that ended in July to August.

Speaking last week, the company’s global communications director, Jacques Xiang Li, said Elfbar would provide “thousands of bins by the end of this year” across independent stores, supermarkets and specialist vape retailers. 

Read more: UKVIA to launch new vape recycling information hub

When challenged by Better Retailing on why it had taken so long to launch its recycling bins, despite two years of public and retailer concern, Elfbar said “it hasn’t taken that long”. The company claimed that manufacturing and dismantling systems had needed to “catch up” with the disposables trend. 

In October, Better Retailing revealed Elfbar’s government lobbying, in which it claimed the vaping scandals are “primarily a retail problem”. Challenged on the claim last week at a press event in London, the company’s director of government affairs, Eve Peters, said illicit sales are “100% not the retailer’s fault”, adding: “There are a small proportion of people selling these products [illegally].” 

Peters said the company is hoping to avoid a single-use vape ban, as the products are “really important” in helping smokers to quit.