How to safely dispose of expired medicines
by Heather
What do you do when you are clearing out your medicine cabinet? Hopefully, you do it every once in a while so it’s not like your fridge with the open bottle of salad dressing that expired in 2001 (that’s a post for another day). I recently had the pleasure of cleaning out my medicine cabinet in anticipation of a bathroom remodel project so I did some research and thought I would pass it along to you.
Did you already know that if you dump your old medicine in the trash, it will end up in landfills leaching icky and toxic chemicals into our soil? Likewise, if you flush old pills and potions down the toilet, they will contaminate our drinking water? I did make it through about 30 years of my life before either of these ideas ever occurred to me — so, Earth, I’m very sorry!
The safest way to discard of old medicines (either expired or just unfinished) is to call up your nearest pharmacy and/or hospital to ask them whether they collect this sort of hazardous waste for disposal.
I called my local pharmacy, and they didn’t want my old drugs, but the pharmacist said the local hospital disposes of old medicines. When I called them, I spoke to three different people before finding out exactly where to drop off the goods. So before you load up your car with every old pill in your house, call around first.
Photo by ruralgold. Some rights reserved. Usage does not constitute photographer’s endorsement.
