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If you have a large amount of expired medicine lying around you may have an urge to just flush it down the toilet. Well, stop right there! Doing so can pollute our water supply and otherwise have terrible effects on people’s health. What do you do? You don’t want to just leave your medicines sitting around after they’ve expired, and you definitely know about the risks of people abusing prescription and over-the-counter drugs. You want to prevent that, so you’ve got to get rid of all your pills and medicines somehow. Well, you have many good options.
One of the best ways to dispose of unwanted and expired medicine is to deliver it to a drug take-back such as the one sponsored by Cortland Area Communities That Care. It takes place two times a year at the Cortlandville Fire Station on Route 13. You simply drive through the designated area and a volunteer will take your old medicines, sort and weigh them, and then pack them away to be delivered to an incinerator where they are safely burnt away. The next drug take-back is September 24th 2011, look for advertisements and announcements throughout September.
Another option is through Kinney Drugs which takes back drugs on the last Saturday of every month, but unlike the one on September 24th, Kinney Drugs is unable to take controlled substances. You may be more limited in what you can dispose of, but it is still another great option. Are you unable to get to such an event or a pharmacy? Well, there are other ways you can dispose of those old meds if you can’t make a take-back.
According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), disposing of your old drugs in the trash can be a good method, but just putting pill bottles in a garbage bag isn’t the best idea. You could try mixing your pills with something unpleasant like old coffee grounds or kitty litter, to make your drugs less appealing and unlikely to be found by someone who could go through your trash. You can also put your medicine in a sealable plastic bag to keep them from breaking out and dissolving in the rain and leaking into the garbage.
If you do throw your medicine in the trash, it is best to scratch out any identifying information to protect yourself from identity theft. There is always the risk that medicine could leak out or somehow be stolen. Taking your unwanted and expired medicine to a drug take-back event is a better option—although anything beats just flushing pills down the toilet!
Hopefully by now you’ve slowly backed away from the bathroom and put the pill bottle down realizing the dangers of flushing pills down the toilet, and maybe you’ve also noted down September 24th 2011 on your calendar as the next drug take-back day. Remember that when it comes to unwanted or expired medicine you don’t want to share it with your friends, because that could have deadly consequences. Also remember, if you flush medicine down the toilet you’re sharing it with all of us.
Bitterbaum is an AmeriCorps volunteer and a staff member at Cortland Area Communities that Care. He can be reached at 607-299-4910.
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