Excess medication needs to be discarded carefully. If it is thrown out in the garbage, there is always the possibility that drug addicts will find it. If it is flushed down the toilet, the ingredients can get into the water supply and cause public health risks.
The best thing to do with old medication is to try to return it to the pharmacy that sold it to you. Some pharmacies have programs to take drugs back so it’s worth asking about this. Unfortunately, many pharmacies these days have opted out of taking back the medications, meaning it is up to you to dispose of them properly.
The best solution we’ve found for clients’ used medications is to dump the drugs out of their containers into a plastic bag – a garbage bag or even a small storage bag – and fill that bag with something gross. We often dump tomato sauce into it, or used kitty litter, or excess paint from an old can. The key is to make the contents of the bag so disgusting that a desperate drug addict will not take the drugs. Now tie up this bag and drop it into a larger garbage bag with your regular trash.
This may seem pretty extreme lengths to go to just to throw something away, but we’ve always felt it was important to do this properly. The potential repercussions seem too high.
For the bottles and boxes themselves, we recommend either removing the label with your name on it or using a magic marker to cover up your details. Do not dispose of the label in the same bag as the medication itself. The containers can usually be recycled.
It takes a few extra steps but it’s worth it to know you’re disposing of your medication properly.
