What do you do when you have leftover or expired medicine? Do you flush it down the toilet? Do you simply throw it in the trash? Maybe you know that your doctor’s office or pharmacy has a place for them. I bet you didn’t know that there was a proper way to dispose of leftover or expired medications. Or that there are certain medications that can’t be flushed down the toilet as per the FDA.
Below are some easy ways to get rid of unwanted meds that you might have laying around.
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Coffee Grounds, Laundry Detergent, or Cat Litter
This is probably the easiest way to destroy medication. Instead of getting rid of your coffee grounds or kitty litter, put some in a baggie and add your medication to the mixture. Mix it up and it is safe to put in the trash. If you are using the laundry detergent method, you can put the medication in the bottle of laundry detergent if there is a little bit left and voila you are done. Just make sure that when you throw away the empty bottle you black-out any personal information as well as the name of the medication.
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Medication Drop Off Station
If you do not feel comfortable disposing of the medications yourself, there are multiple public locations that have drop-off bins for unwanted medications. You can even check with your local police department, hospital, or pharmacy to see if they take back prescriptions. Most police departments even host a medication take-back night where anyone can come and give back medication, no questions asked.
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Flushing
When it comes to disposing of medication, this is probably the way that everyone thinks of doing it. In my opinion, this is one of the most dangerous ways of doing so. There are medications that are on the FDA’s do not flush list. In order to check to be able to safely dispose of your medications with this method, you must check the list on the FDA’s website. The FDA is also aware that this impacts the water supply and stresses that flushing medications is a last resort and should not be done unless there is a different way for you to do so.