vapeAWARE

About the Program

Category: Health (Best in Category)

Year: 2020

Together, the Boulder County Hazardous Materials Management Facility (HMMF), Boulder County Public Health’s Tobacco Education and Prevention Partnership (TEPP), and representatives from the Boulder Valley School District (BVSD) in Environmental Services and the student health staff, informed, created, and implemented a disposal protocol for tobacco and nicotine waste for the school district.Our collaborative efforts led to creating safe storage and handling guidelines for schools, implementing school disposal guidelines in BVSD, providing 29 disposal bins to BVSD middle and high schools and two transportation depots, designing two new educational resources for students and teachers in English and Spanish, disseminating these resources and a vaping toolkit with BVSD, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (our state regulatory agency), and various other school districts in Colorado, and building a tracking method for materials disposed of at the HMMF.In 2019, we shipped more than 2,500 vaping devices (103 pounds) and 161 e-liquid containers (16 pounds) from businesses and residents at a combined disposal cost of $2,711.