Household Hazardous Waste - Expired Medicine?

[rivatnt]

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Do you guys throw old medicine in the trash cans? You have to save them and bring it to a HHW collection event/site. Should we mix up all the pills and bring them to the event or leave them in the original containers with labels?

Also, can identity theft occur if you throw away old pill bottles with the labels still on them? I try to rip off the labels and crumble them up.

 

[tartaufraise]

This bothers me very much: that ppl. toss drugs to regular garbage.. BUT with that said, in the pharmacies that I worked as a tech (I have worked both retail and hospital), *noone* really cares.. we never have a special waste collections for drugs & I was instructed by manager to toss opened meds in regular trash can. You would think being a pharmacy that we should have a special disposal procedure for drugs, right? I'm a very envionmentally conscious person, I try my best to recycle everything and just to think of all those antibiotics dumped to the environment, how many superbugs are in the making as we speak? (ok, maybe I'm a bit paranoid here).

Only unopened meds that are expired are placed on special bins for "EXPIRED MEDS" for collections later on and credit from the manufacturers. But if any customer returned his/her expired pills, we tossed them (unless it's inhaler, then we put them in Biohazard baggie & tossed them with all biohazard mat. or narcs, which we had to dispose it in the sink/special waste area in the vault for someone to pick it up later on)

 

[DrugDealer]

At the store where I work, we return all the expired products AND customer returns to the manufacturer for credit. Not sure what happens to them after that.

At a Target where I did a rotation, I found 2 different types of flouride tablets mixed together in one bottle. I separated them and the pharmacist flushed the one brand down the toilet.

At school, we learned incineration is best, but if you don't have access you can do the following (this is what I will do in the future if my own meds at home expire or something): Crush the meds, place in the original vial, and wrap it up tightly with duct tape. Double bag in a Ziploc bag. You can do this for liquids, too.

You're right, you should always remove the portion of the label that has patient info, especially if you're getting rid of meds at work!

 

[tartaufraise]

At the store where I work, we return all the expired products AND customer returns to the manufacturer for credit. Not sure what happens to them after that.

Even the loose pills in the bottles? They cannot be identified anymore.. that's why in the place that I worked in, they do not accept loose pills, rather they just tossed them away in regular garbage.

At school, we learned incineration is best, but if you don't have access you can do the following (this is what I will do in the future if my own meds at home expire or something): Crush the meds, place in the original vial, and wrap it up tightly with duct tape. Double bag in a Ziploc bag. You can do this for liquids, too.

And then, what do you do with the tightly wrapped meds? Where do you toss them?

It kinda bothers me that health institution like pharmacy don't have proper disposal unit for expired meds or even sharps. Ideally, we should have incinerator of somekind to destroy them. What bothers me even more is that, there's no needle disposal either! I worked on a community pharmacy near downtown and we do dispense needles for diabetic patients, but quite often (I swear I see this in regular basis.. at least 2-3 times per week) patients came back with used needles for proper disposal and we don't have any (rather we refer them to a nearby hospital's ER for sharps disposal).

 

[DrugDealer]

Even the loose pills in the bottles? They cannot be identified anymore.. that's why in the place that I worked in, they do not accept loose pills, rather they just tossed them away in regular garbage.

Yes, even loose pills. Maybe the inventory girl dumps them in an expired stock bottle first, I'm not sure.

And then, what do you do with the tightly wrapped meds? Where do you toss them?

Sorry, shoulda been more clear...then it just goes in the regular trash. The rationale is that plastic is never going to degrade, so the contained meds will never leach out into the groundwater.

It kinda bothers me that health institution like pharmacy don't have proper disposal unit for expired meds or even sharps. Ideally, we should have incinerator of somekind to destroy them. What bothers me even more is that, there's no needle disposal either! I worked on a community pharmacy near downtown and we do dispense needles for diabetic patients, but quite often (I swear I see this in regular basis.. at least 2-3 times per week) patients came back with used needles for proper disposal and we don't have any (rather we refer them to a nearby hospital's ER for sharps disposal).

We don't have needle disposal, either, but I think diabetic patients usually just buy needle canisters. Some of the canisters come with a service where you mail them the can of used needles after you've filled it up and they dispose of it.

 

[bananaface]

If you are really worried about pills being thrown in the garbage, toss them in a sharps container and let them go to the biohazardous waste disposal facility like all the sharps containers.

If your patients have sharps they are required by law to put them in a sharps container which can be purchased at multiple retail stores. They can often return them to a pharmacy that contracts with a disposal service in exchange for a small fee. If this service isn't offered by pharmacies in your area, they should call the local waste management office (yes, the garbage people) and ask them where a disposal site is offered. Throwing a sharps contained in the regualr garbage is illegal and not safe for the refuse workers.

 

[SomeGuy]

We sell disposal containers for sharps. We also have a medical waste disposal service. We take back anything that we've sold (but we really just ask if they got it from us, otherwise we send them to wherever they said they bought the stuff). Some locations document receiving of any sharps, just in case something does happen, they know who it came from.

I'm pretty sure sending back meds that have already been dispensed and have left the pharmacy back to the manufacturer/distributor for credit is fraudulent, but I don't really know what your contract is. Over here, doing anything other than disposing dispensed medications that have come into the patient's hands is a BIG no-no.