With the increasing problems with drug abuse plaguing our society, there often is a question with regards to disposal of unused medications. The old training used to be to crush it up and throw it down the toilet. However, this is not a very environmentally friendly method of disposal. Tests performed at water treatment facilities often test positive for compounds like Prozac, an antidepressant. Fish are currently showing up with human hormones from ingesting residuals from birth control pills to testosterone. Clearly there are better solutions.

Recently, several different solutions have been proposed. A common suggestion has been to crush the pills and mix them with used coffee grounds and then throw them in the trash. Most likely, this is not much better than flushing them down the toilet. If the trash is incinerated, that would destroy the medications safely, but most trash is still placed in landfills, and again may end up in the environment.

Another solution offered by some pharmacies involves a special bag provided by the pharmacy with a chemical agent that neutralizes the drugs when they are placed inside the bag, making them unusable. The drugs then can be thrown away in the trash, or in some places returned to the pharmacy for disposal. There is a push on the state level to make it legal for pharmacies to take back unused drugs and then they can send them to an incinerator to be fully destroyed. High temperature burning leaves no significant chemical residual that may be harmful.

Police Intervention

One of the best solutions currently available is returning them to drug take back boxes that many police departments use. My local police department has a disposal box that is in the lobby, and is can be used 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The police will then make sure the medications are sent for safe disposal at an appropriate incinerator.

The most important thing to be aware of is that unused medications sitting around the home are a significant safety hazard. They can be abused, misused, or even accidentally taken, which can lead to overdose and death. Proper disposal is essential. Currently, the best solutions are to use police disposal boxes, neutralizing pouches, or to return them to a pharmacy. Avoid flushing them down the toilet when possible.

Sometime in the future, hopefully some genius will figure out how to safely recycle medications. This would not be an easy task. Each individual medication would need to be separated, and then chemically reprocessed and purified to the same standard as the original production. Whether this would be cost effective, no one currently knows. In the meantime, old and unused medications need to be safely disposed on a timely basis since these are dangerous and toxic compounds.