Almost 8.5k people have now signed a petition set up by waste management firm, businesswaste.co.uk, calling for a complete ban on disposable barbecues.
Back in 2022, several supermarkets vowed to remove such products from sale. However, they continue to be sold by many retailers, regularly causing fires across the UK and with hundreds of thousands going to landfill every year.
Fires caused by disposable barbecues are widely reported annually, and these can lead to large-scale grassland and heath fires and cause long-term habitat loss - especially pertinent given the current wildfires raging across Europe.
Designed to be single-use and often only lit for two hours, the products are a huge waste of materials and extremely difficult to recycle. As a result, disposables often end up in landfill - if they aren’t abandoned or littered first.
However, in 2026, the products can still be bought easily online, including through some of the same supermarkets that said they would remove them from stores. Many other retailers - often independents - still stock disposables in store.
While there are no up-to-date published figures on the sales of disposable barbecues in the UK, before major supermarket withdrawals in 2022 they were estimated at around a million units per year. Current usage also remains high, and with the product difficult to recycle, it’s likely hundreds of thousands are heading to landfill annually.
Many people pick disposable products due to cost and convenience, but there are now plenty of reusable options on the market which still satisfy these needs. For between £15 and £30, retailers such as IKEA and Argos sell folding and portable barbecues which are lightweight, designed for transporting and can be used hundreds of times.
Mark Hall, waste management expert and director at the BusinessWaste.co.uk website, said: “We’ve been campaigning against the use and sale of disposable barbecues for years. The product is extremely wasteful and damaging to our local environment. Every year, we continue to see news reports of the damage done by the use of disposable products and boycotts have proved to be fleeting.
“In 2026, we really need to see an all-out ban put in place. There’s no reason for these products to remain on sale when much more environmentally friendly and cost-effective alternatives are available.
“A ban would protect our green spaces, local wildlife and stop hundreds of thousands of disposable barbecues clogging our landfills. We’d encourage the public to support this by signing our petition, sharing with friends and writing to their local MPs.”
You can sign the petition here.
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