As part of a massive spring cleaning effort, we managed to clean out cabinets recently that hadn’t been touched in several years. Included in those cabinets were bottles of medications from the cats who came before us, which led to the very important question: How do you safely dispose of medications you have around the house?
We know that there are a lot of ways that you shouldn’t dispose of things.
Flushing your unused medications down the toilet or drain is a bad idea. The US Geological Survey has already found levels of drugs such as antibiotics, hormones, and contraceptives in 80% of the rivers and streams tested in part of a nationwide study. Additional studies have shown that fish and other wildlife can be adversely affected by medications, even when they are expired.
Instead of flushing medications, check to see if there are drug take-back events in your area one of the following ways:
- Call your city or county government’s household trash and recycling service to ask whether a drug take-back program is available in your community. Some counties hold periodic household hazardous waste collection days, where over-the-counter and prescription drugs are accepted at a set location.
Ask your pharmacist whether he or she knows of any medicine disposal programs in your area. - Find a local, independent pharmacy in your area who participates in drug disposal through disposemymeds.com.
- Check the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s web site for National Prescription Drug Take-Back Event information.
- Ask your veterinarian. They may be willing to include unused medications originally purchased through them in shipments to their medical waste company.
If there aren’t any drug take-back events in your area, you can purchase special postage-paid packages from your local pharmacy that send medications back to a medical waste company. Some medications are ineligible for this program so read the fine print before you purchase.
The same guidelines can be used for disposal of human medications, though your veterinarian is unlikely to be willing to take back unused human medication. Keeping our groundwater safe is everybody’s responsibility!
These are great tips!!! We’ve got some spring cleaning to do ourselves and have a number of left over medications. Thank you!!!
What good info! The mom has some old meds of ours and she didn’t know what to do with them…so they still sit in the cupboard.
We didn’t know you can return old medications – we’ll get Mum to ask our vert if they will do this for us.
Luv Hannah and Lucy xx xx
This is excellent information! Thanks for bringing it to our attention. I won’t be flushing unused meds anymore.
super great advice!! Thank you for sharing!
grate post guys…frank lee we get kinda nervous bout de waters heer we drink…they kinda sorta sum times dont come outta de tap lookin sew good; filtered ore knot 🙁
I had never thought about this before. Great information – thanks for sharing! We have some old pet meds in the cabinet as well. I’ll have to look into this.
Super PSA! You are right we also have medications from Abby and Grace still in the house. Mom finds getting rid of anything that was Abby’s hard. Even her medication she so hated. 🙁
Yep, we’ve stockpiled some, too, since our last safe cleanout. We did some city-approved concoction thing, although it’s been so long my mom can’t remember what. (Plus she’s kinda old.)
It always pays to do this safely! Great post!
Interesting to see how it’s managed elsewhere. In Switzerland, unused or out-of-date medicine can be returned free of charge in any pharmacy which will eliminate them in a right way or will recycle them. Purrs
This is all very important information. (Uh Pierre, make sure you are out of the waste basket before collection day!)
Back when Gramma passed, the hospice person flushed all her drugs down the toilet. TW wishes she could have saved the xanax. MOL! We’ve since learned this wasn’t a good idea but at the time that was what they did.