Following our recent article on the ban of single use vapes in the UK, Strathclyde Telegraph speaks to Heather McLaughin, Campaigns and Social Innovation Manager for Keep Scotland Beautiful. In this in-depth conversation, Heather discusses how an unfunded coalition of charities turned environmental research into a national policy change.

Q: Last Year the UK Government made the landmark decision to ban single use vapes. You were one of the driving forces influencing policy makers as part of your initiative. Could you walk us through your role in that process?

Heather: This is one of the things I’m probably most proud of in my role at Keep Scotland Beautiful. This started as a Scottish coalition, initially calling for the Scottish government to ban them and it blew up from there in a very good way. These things come around for us, you know, we’ve been trying to tackle litter in the biggest way possible for several years. It’s about trends and nuances over the years. During the pandemic, face masks became a very common littered item that we then tackled and following that, vapes.

Quite luckily, Keep Scotland Beautiful was already working with Ash Scotland and the Marine Conservation Society to tackle cigarettes and smoking related litter. And Laura Young, now known as Laura Anderson (newest charity ambassador at Keep Scotland Beautiful and an award-winning climate activist), brought to our attention vapes. And we were able to pool resources to make this quite a big movement.

Laura was a volunteer, she did loads of work and was tackling this on her own, but working with the three of us we were able to bring our communications colleagues, our policy colleagues, and our evidence and research to support the claim that we needed to ban them. Keep Scotland Beautiful are an environmental charity, so we were able to get litter data and have an understanding of the recycling capability of vapes. Ash Scotland are a health charity, so they were able to bring the health angle and combined, we made a very, very easy call and got most people behind us.

And for us, the interesting thing about the ban was that wasn’t where we started. We started with what are these things? What is the issue? A very early meeting was, “so what do we want to do? Do we want to call for more recycling of them? Do we want to call for manufacturers to change how they’re made? Do we want a deposit added to them?” We came around to the fact that they’re so bad. They’re made with so many complex items. They’re so hard, and not really cost efficient, to recycle that they just should be banned. It was interesting that first step was to ban it.

Q: Could you explain what initially prompted Keep Scotland Beautiful to take action on single use vapes and launch this project?

Heather: As we got deeper into researching what these (single use vapes) were and what they were made of and what could happen to them in terms of recycling, we just slowly realized how much of an issue they were. And that, led to this big call for a ban.

My dad, in fact, used to use a reusable vape. He had one, it was taped up because it was broken in some areas. He charged it, he bought the liquids. So, there was a reusable option, and we (Britain/society) took a huge backstep and made it a single use item. For us, it was not only just about those environmental issues, but the fact that we were stepping away from the circular economy that we’re all trying to work towards.

I think for us it was that circular economy aspect, that there was a reusable one and we wanted people if they had to vape to use that, but also the resources needed to make single use vapes and the fact that recycling wasn’t really viable. It was our community groups across the country: seeing them getting annoyed, hearing about the fires and the dangers of them. I think it just all compounds to the need for a ban and the need for us to put a bit of time into it to get over that line.

Q: In terms of the campaign itself, what resources did you mobilize to ensure the execution was both strategic and impactful?

Heather: What we did as a group was decide who had the capacity in each team to support the effort. The Marine Conservation Society had a volunteer who could do some research and compile a statement. The communications team at Keep Scotland Beautiful were able to write press releases and letters that we all could sign. We are all part of various networks; Keep Scotland Beautiful are a member of Scottish Environment Link Network so we extended reach into that network. We work with all 32 councils; we were able to talk to them. It was about mapping our networks and who’s got the strongest connection to different sectors and who could then get them involved. And then Laura just tirelessly worked on her own separately, getting councils to sign up. The media attention was very strong for this one. We were all speaking to press, doing interviews, doing radio slots, writing blogs. It was about keeping it high on everyone’s agenda. And so, the politicians took it seriously, because ultimately, the audience for this was the government, because we needed them to act to bring in a ban.

Q: In a large-scale initiative such as this, communication is critical to success. As a campaigns officer, how did you generate awareness and ensure the message reached the right audience?

Heather: When you’re ultimately calling for the public to get behind you, you need to have that research done. We can claim, oh, there are littered items, but someone might argue against that. It’s about having very clear (reasons).
A big part of what we do across other campaigns as well is about speaking to all stakeholders. And that might include the industries that are causing the issues and understanding what they might push back and how to then get ahead of that argument. In some cases, we adapt the response so that we’re saying ‘let’s do this together in a more effective way’.

We’re always trained when we’re doing media interviews to have that call to action ready to go at the very end.

Q: Were there distinct communication approaches tailored for the media, public and policymakers?

Heather: Yeah, social media, obviously, needs to be tight and very visual. And the media are always looking for the hook. So, we had to understand what they were going to ask us. In some cases, we might have been interviewed with an opposer. Then with the policy makers, it is about laying out the evidence and what it can do for them to enact it. With the local authorities, it was about the cost savings or the recycling cost savings, the dangers of the fires in their facilities. It’s all slightly targeted. The beauty in this probably was the simplicity, the call was a ban and the evidence was so clear. Beyond industry, there was very, very little pushback on what we were calling for. That includes cross-party support at government level.

Q: Among the key stakeholders, which group proved the most challenging to persuade and why?

Heather: I think one of the slower areas was the public sector. The 32 councils that Laura was constantly trying to get to declare their support for the ban. Some of those were slightly slower than others.

A big target for this, in terms of communication, was the young people. Vaping has such an impact on young people and it’s a potential gateway to other smoking behaviors and addictions. What we found really rewarding in that space is we, at one point, had the youth parliament on a call who basically said “we didn’t know that”. That’s really useful. So sometimes you sort of find those audiences who go we want to get behind that. You think that’s going to be an issue and it’s not.

Q: What would you identify as the biggest challenge in the implementation of this initiative?

Heather: I guess the first point would be the capacity for us to do it. It kind of had to be done as and when we all had time because it wasn’t funded. That was one challenge. It is a common challenge in the third sector.

The biggest hurdle, unsurprisingly, was that we’re charities. We don’t have budget for this necessarily, and some of us are relying on volunteer effort to support with advocacy. But we are campaigning against a well-funded tobacco and vaping industry which are lobbying against our calls.

Q: Would you consider the eventual ban on single use vapes to be the defining success of your initiative?

Heather: Yes. I think it showcases that coming together can achieve something. It was three individuals, one in each charity squirrelling away when they can. We are aware that it is great that it was banned, but what comes next? The industry is very fast moving and they’re always ready for the next thing. We’re still collecting data and we will keep doing that for a couple of years, I imagine, to see what happens because of the ban. Honestly, four years is quick to get something like that over the line.

Q: What role do you see universities, such as the University of Strathclyde, playing in strengthening the effectiveness and compliance of policies like this?

Heather: I saw your question about this and thought there could have been a whole thing we did with universities such as Strathclyde. Young people were the main concern in terms of it being a new audience. When we say young, one of the concerns was the fact that they shouldn’t have even had them and be able to get them in the first place, so anyone under 18. In universities most students are over 18, yet they are still young people. And they are probably the influencers for that younger generation. There could have been a very cool thing we could have done with students who quite often didn’t find vapes cool and thought they were quite a childish thing. If we had time and thought about that as a pool, it would have been a very clever way to reduce vaping before the ban came into force.

Q: Finally, what advice would you like to give to other organizations or policymakers who are working on similar campaigns?

Heather: Do the research and speak to all stakeholders. Understanding what impact, the initiative will have on local authorities, on industry, on consumers and the environment. For vapes, health was such a powerful tool for us to accompany the environmental stuff. For me, it is sitting down and doing that full research piece and not accidentally shooting for something and having these unintended consequences that might come from it.

rashmiisharma

Hi, I Rashmii Sharma (she/her). I am thrilled to contribute to the Strathclyde Telegraph as a sustainability writer. I am also the founder and President of the Sustainability Society (SITY) at the Strath Union. You can become a member of the society for free and follow us on Instagram @strathsustainability. When I am not digging up policies or interviewing eco-innovators, I love trying hands at complicated recipes and capturing the scenic beauty of Scotland.