Cabinet rules out national ban on disposable vapes and filters

The cabinet will not introduce a national ban on single-use plastic products such as disposable vapes and cigarette filters, ministers have told MPs, saying the legal obstacles are too great and the issue is better dealt with at European level.

Plans for a deposit scheme on plastic squeeze pouches, increasingly used for drinks, soap and detergent, have also been put on hold because bottle return machines cannot process them.

The decisions were set out in a letter to parliament from climate minister Stientje van Veldhoven, health minister Sophie Hermans and infrastructure state secretary Annet Bertram, published alongside several commissioned studies.

Research by public health institute RIVM in April found a ban on cigarette filters, which are made of a slow-degrading plastic, would cut microplastics in the environment without making smoking more harmful, because filters offer no proven health benefit.

Some nine billion filter cigarettes are sold in the Netherlands every year and many butts end up on the street.

But the ministers said the legal scope for a national filter ban is “very limited and uncertain” and warned smokers would buy filter cigarettes abroad, online or on the illegal market instead.

A national ban on disposable vapes, which regularly cause fires in bin lorries and at waste processing plants, would breach EU tobacco rules, the letter said. Belgium banned the devices using an exemption, but the ministers do not expect the Netherlands would secure the same.

A European ban “seems the most promising option”, they wrote, and the cabinet will lobby for one in Brussels.

Flavoured vapes are already banned in the Netherlands but disposable devices remain on sale, and ministers are cracking down on the illegal vape trade.