In today’s day-and-age, it’s more important than ever to know how to properly dispose of medications. Opiate use is out of control. Preventing the next generation from becoming addicted is a step in the right direction.
Disposing of medications is fairly easy. There are things you can do during your regular house cleaning routine in order to do just that!
Items Needed to Safely Dispose of Medications
- Trash Bags
- Zip Lock Bags
- Permanent Markers
- Coffee Grounds
- Cat Litter
- House Cleaning Items
Look for Expiration Dates
Medicine cabinets are notorious for collecting medicine and other pill bottles. If they’re over a decade old, start tossing everything. First check the expiration dates. Anything that has been sitting in your medicine cabinet for over a year, unless it’s an over-the-counter item like Tylenol or cold medicine, should go. It’s better safe than sorry, and taking an expired medicine or supplement isn’t worth the risk.
Cross Off Names and Addresses
Once you have pulled out of your medicine cabinet all items with expired expiration dates, it’s time to move onto the next part of the house cleaning process. In short: It’s time to cross off or scratch out any important contact or personal information on bottles of prescription medications.
You can either rip off the labels and wad them up, or you can use a permanent market and cross out your name, birth date, address, and other information as warranted. Making sure to do this as you dispose of medications ensures that you protect yourself and family members from potential threats like security theft or other property crimes.
Throw Away with Other Trash
Believe it or not, there are people out there who will willingly dig through a garbage can in order to find their next fix. To avoid this happening in your own alley, dispose of medications with other trash. People are more likely to leave medications and pills alone in the trash if they are mixed with old, expired food items. Using cat litter, or even dog excrement will work also. Sure, it might add an additional “gross factor” to taking out the trash, but it will ensure nobody gets their hands on old drugs.
For environment friendly purposes some local police stations have a receptacle for expired prescription medications you can use. You can look up on the internet for places that will take old prescriptions and dispose of them properly if you are not comfortable putting them in the trash.
Learn a few tricks for Organizing Medicine Bottles
Consolidate Over the Counter Medicines
With the majority of your house cleaning out of the way, it’s now time to move onto the odds and ends. If you notice that you have multiple bottles of pain relievers or another over the counter medicine, save yourself some space and consolidate.
As long as neither bottle is expiring soon, you should be good to go! Plus, you’ll free up additional room in your medicine cabinet for beauty products or something different altogether.
Good tips in this post. Our local police department also has a day once or twice a year where they will take old prescription medications that you want to get rid of. I think they do it on a Saturday all day thing where you can drop them off at the police station and they will dispose of them.
Thanks for sharing that information. It’s great that people take their precautions. Might be a good idea to share information about organizations or businesses that take old medications.
I found this post for Organizing Medication. It does have pretty good ideas!
Perhaps other readers can contribute with that information.