How to dispose of old Medicines?

[lovetoscrap]

I am cleaning out my medicine cabinets and have a ton of old and expired stuff that needs to be disposed of. I used to flush it, but it seems like I read that you shouldn't do that??

I have pills, liquids, inhalers and some expired Epi-pens. I am not comfortable just throwing them in the trash.

 

[MnMomtoboys]

Ask your pharmacist if they will dispose of them for you. Mine took the vicodin off my hands when I was telling them how surprised I was about people wanting me to give the pills to them.

 

[dawson5]

I have a friend who works at Walgreen's, she told me that they will take their expired medicine and dispose of it. If you are like me, it's from all different places and some OTC stuff. I took a grinder to the pills and mixed all the liquids together and then mixed with cat litter and disposed of it that way. My mother in law says you can mix with flour, bake and throw away. I think it is still edible that way and not as safe. I don't know anyone hard up enough to go sifting through cat litter to try and get high.

 

[mickeyplanner08]

I work for Hospice, and we now are doing the dissolve them in water and dump them into kitty litter bit, too. It's pretty gross, but now the fishees don't get all the "happy" meds we were flushing

 

[Luv Bunnies]

Do a search online to find a drop-off location in your area. Some pharmacies take olds meds and some don't. Our community recently had a drop-off event where you could bring your old meds for proper disposal. You definitely don't want to flush them or put them in the trash.

 

[Breezy_Carol]

Our local landfill (dump) has hazardous waste disposal day periodically and they accepted drugs then.

 

[JoiseyMom]

My pharmicist told me to just trash the pills. Only certain ones can't go in there. Liquids can go down the drain.

 

[maelstrom]

You can bring them to your pharmacy and they will dispose of them properly.

 

[Shugardrawers]

What kinda pills? I might be able to help

 

[DisneyCaliCouple]

We were able to bring unused and expired meds to our local firestation to dispose of them safely. We were told most firestations have a hazardous waste disposal and if they don't, they can probably tell you where one locally is.

 

[Ohiodislover]

At work, we used to destoy by flushing---Hated it. Nothing like getting it in to our water supply. I imagine I have been the cause of a bunch of trippin out Nemos.

Now the method to destroy them is to mix them w/ water, to make a slurry mixture, and then drop the mix onto newspaper, and allow it to soak in, and throw away. This is per the Md board of pharmacology, or so we were told by our pharmacy.

 

[JCJRSmith]

PLEASE DO NOT PUT MEDICINES DOWN THE DRAIN OR FLUSH THEM!!!

I work for a water company - yes I work in IT but I work in IT for a water company. My company has water treatment plants and sewage treatment plants.

Water treatment plants take water from the environment (streams, ponds, rivers, ground water, etc) and filter and purify it so it can be ingested by humans.

Sewage treatment plants take waste water and do their level best to purify it enough so the water can go back into the water table in the environment.
One of the most difficult issues facing water companies today is removing the chemicals from the waste water so the water is clean enough to put back into the environment.

My company has a program where our customers can bring old medicines for disposal to the local company office. Check with yours - they may do the same.

 

[Judy from Boise]

another method with pills are stick in a ziplock and crush, then empty the contents into your coffee grounds and put in the trash.