recycle your prescription bottles

[GardeniaGirl]

I came across this today and thought I would pass it along.

Where I live, my city recycling does not accept prescription medication bottles. So I was searching on line and found this resource.

Anyway, this website is by a kid who started a recycling project back in 2005 - he collects prescription medication bottles and donates them to a local low income medical clinic.

So far, he has collected 34,000 bottles!

His address is on the website so you can send them to him. His website says he has received them from every state in the US so far.



http://waste-not-want-not.tripod.com/id14.html (http://waste-not-want-not.tripod.com/id14.html)

[Pharmacist.steve]

Technically it is illegal for a Pharmacist to re-use a Rx vial - even for the same person's rxs... part of the child safety package act... and that doesn't even take into account the possibility of cross contamination & allergies.. maybe the poor and uninsured are exempt from this Federal law...

[Mark N]

GG, I have often wondered why we couldn't recycle prescription bottles but they need to reformulate the plastic they use to be able to recycle it. Steve has great points about why they shouldn't be reused. Thanks for the link to recycle our bottles but I don't know how he is getting past the restrictions on reuse.

[mrsdoubtfyre]

1) recycle old empty bottles-- (take your labels off or black them out)

2) recycle contents (unused drugs).

Much about donation of unused medications depends on your state's laws.

Some forbid it, others allow it under certain circumstances.

If forbidden in your state, they may still allow you to donate for overseas use.

Some chain pharmacies send back unsalable product and can also do that for you. Then they dispose of it thru acceptable channels either burn it or
donate it overseas. I would scratch out or black out your identification, but leave the name of the drug intact on the labels.

This is one agency that accepts RX drugs under certain circumstances:
http://www.worldmedicalrelief.org/productdonations.html

Controlled substances typically are not accepted.

Do not flush medications down the sewer. They end up in our drinking water.

[Kira]

I do not know anything about recycling or throwing away the used bottles.

But, like Mrs D said, you should NOT flush old/leftover meds, or throw them in the trash, either. There is concern that they can contaminate soil & drinking water (they explain it a bit here: http://www.meddropdane.org/why.htm).

In Wisconsin (at least in the Madison area), there is a program called MedDrop to properly dispose of unwanted meds. http://www.meddropdane.org

MedDrop is a collaboration between hospitals/clinics, pharmacies, med & pharmacy schools & groups, local gov't & public health, police, etc. It is staffed by volunteer pharmacists, pharmacy students, and "hazardous waste experts." You drop off the meds anonymously, and they dispose of them. That's about it.

You can get rid of your name & address on the bottles but they do want to know what med(s) they are so they can dispose of them correctly. The website says that they don't ask your name and that everything is destroyed to protect confidentiality. I have never done this, so I don't know how confidential the process actually is.

(As an aside, the patient insert for fentanyl patches explicitly says to flush the used or leftover patches.)

[Pharmacist.steve]

I do not know anything about recycling or throwing away the used bottles.

But, like Mrs D said, you should NOT flush old/leftover meds, or throw them in the trash, either. There is concern that they can contaminate soil & drinking water (they explain it a bit here: http://www.meddropdane.org/why.htm).

In Wisconsin (at least in the Madison area), there is a program called MedDrop to properly dispose of unwanted meds. http://www.meddropdane.org

MedDrop is a collaboration between hospitals/clinics, pharmacies, med & pharmacy schools & groups, local gov't & public health, police, etc. It is staffed by volunteer pharmacists, pharmacy students, and "hazardous waste experts." You drop off the meds anonymously, and they dispose of them. That's about it.

You can get rid of your name & address on the bottles but they do want to know what med(s) they are so they can dispose of them correctly. The website says that they don't ask your name and that everything is destroyed to protect confidentiality. I have never done this, so I don't know how confidential the process actually is.

(As an aside, the patient insert for fentanyl patches explicitly says to flush the used or leftover patches.)


What all of these "discoveries" in our water fail to recognize is that a certain portion of each tablet/cap/liq etc that a person takes is excreted unchanged or as the active metabolic in urine/feces..

IMO... we could eliminate all the meds that are tossed down the sewer and we would still find same/similar amount of the same meds in the various sites... that we now find...with ~FOUR BILLION Rxs filled annually ..there are somewhere between 60 and 120 BILLION doses that are metabolized by the body and some portion is excreted into our sewer system. I would doubt that there is at the very worse .... there is 1 dose tossed for very 10000 to 100000 doses that are taken. IMO... the amount added -by tossing - is not even measureable

[Kira]

Good point about the amount that is excreted. All I know is that they are doing these "MedDrop" things here...

How do they even go about "properly disposing" of the meds?

[Pharmacist.steve]

Good point about the amount that is excreted. All I know is that they are doing these "MedDrop" things here...

How do they even go about "properly disposing" of the meds?

I suspect that they put them in their bio-hazard furnace and burn them to a crisp

[Kira]

I suspect that they put them in their bio-hazard furnace and burn them to a crisp

Wouldn't all sorts of crazy drug-related burned-up molecules just get into the atmosphere then? I suppose they could have some sort of filter.

I was thinking they could be really annoying about it and just stick them in plastic containers or something and then toss them into the landfill anyway. One of the fancy, high-tech things they do to keep stuff from leeching out of the landfill and into the soil is put a big liner under the landfill. They have a commercial about it on TV and it looks like a glorified plastic tarp.

[Nana4&cntn]

I guess I am lucky as our recycle program accepts prescription bottles.

I asked my PM, "just what do they do with left over meds, when I take my untaken meds to the pharmacy to be deystroyed?' I was told the University medical center puts large amounts of meds into their medical waste incinerator.

I have a friend who works at the med ctr who is checking this out, I got a call a few minutes ago saying they basically cremate ALL the unused meds.

Interesting topic!