Where they go
Vapes go back to a vape shop or a supermarket that sells them. Retailers are required to take back used vapes, whether or not you bought yours there, and most have a bin at the counter. Since the single-use ban of 1 June 2025 the ones being sold are rechargeable, and they still contain a lithium cell that has to come out of the waste stream the same way.
Loose batteries, the AAs, AAAs, button cells and phone batteries, go in the collection tube or box at any shop that sells batteries, or at a council recycling centre. Every council in Scotland accepts them at its recycling centres and several collect them in a bag on top of the bin; check your council's page rather than assuming.
Whole devices with a built-in battery, from a cordless drill to an electric toothbrush to a child's talking toy, are electrical waste. They go to the recycling centre's small electricals container, to a retailer take-back when you buy a replacement, or out with a WEEE collection. Our guides to Glasgow recycling centres and Edinburgh recycling centres list what each site takes.
- Vapes: back to any shop that sells them
- Batteries: shop collection points or the recycling centre
- Devices with built-in batteries: recycling centre or WEEE collection
- Never any household bin
- Tape the terminals of loose lithium batteries
- Swollen or damaged: keep outside, hand in fast
Why the bin is the wrong answer
A lithium battery that is crushed short-circuits and goes into thermal runaway, a self-sustaining fire that makes its own oxygen. A bin lorry compacts everything in it. Glasgow City Council recorded a series of refuse vehicle fires in 2025 and a City of Edinburgh Council crew had to dump a smouldering load on a Polwarth street on 17 August 2026.
The full story, with the fire service's warning and the figures, is in why batteries and vapes are setting Scottish bin lorries on fire. The short version is that every one of those fires began with something that should have gone to a shop or a tip.
It is not only the lorry. Material recovery facilities and transfer stations shred and sort mixed loads, and a battery that gets through the collection burns there instead, which is why carriers now ask what has a battery in it before they load.
Drawer full of dead tech?
Box it up, tell us it has batteries, and it goes as WEEE with the rest of the collection.
Making them safe before you hand them in
Tape over the terminals of loose lithium batteries, including the flat pouch cells from old phones and laptops, so they cannot short against each other in the collection box. Ordinary sticky tape is fine. Keep them in a non-metal container until you go.
A swollen, punctured, leaking or hot battery is a fire in waiting. Do not put it in a drawer. Put it in a metal tin or on a concrete surface outside, away from anything flammable, and take it to the recycling centre as soon as you can. Tell the staff what it is.
Do not try to remove a built-in battery from a device unless it is designed to come out. Take the whole thing. The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service guidance on lithium-ion batteries covers charging and storage as well as disposal.
On a clearance or a bulk collection
When we clear a house or a garage there is always a drawer of dead phones, a box of cables and a couple of cordless tools with the batteries still in them. We take them, but we treat them as WEEE disposal rather than general load: kept aside, not compacted, sent to a facility that removes and recycles the cells.
Tell us when you book if there is anything with a battery in it, and set the obvious ones aside in a box if you can. It changes how we load, and it is easier planned than discovered at the transfer station. Large items with motors and batteries are covered by appliance removal.
What to do with the rest of the drawer is in where to throw away old chargers and cables and how to dispose of e-waste in Glasgow.
