Medicines and the Environment

How To Dispose of Unwanted Medicines 

1. Return them to a pharmacy for safe disposal. To save unnecessary trips, get into the habit of returning unwanted/out of date medications to the pharmacy when you are collecting your prescriptions
2. Do NOT flush medicines down the toilet
3. Recycle and cardboard packaging 
4. Empty plastic packaging and dispose in general waste bin. Remove and unwanted medication, cardboard boxes and paper inserts and put plastic tablet blister packs into the general waste bin. 
5. Return used inhalers to a pharmacy. Landfill disposal of inhalers is harmful to the environment both in material waste and in greenhouse gas emissions due to gas left in the canister.

Did you know? If every inhaler user in the UK returned their inhalers for one year, this could save 512,330 tonnes of CO2 emission which is the same as driving a VW Golf around the world 88,606 times.  

Let's All Help To Protect Our Planet

Published: May 3, 2022