Silver Clovers: How to Dispose of Old Medication

Is your medicine cabinet full of expired drugs or medications you no longer use?

In this edition of Silver Clovers, learn to dispose of your medications, whether it's at home or at an off-site location.

Your medicine cabinet might contain prescription drugs or over-the-counter medicines that are expired unwanted or unused. Keeping medication in your home can be unsafe. Let's talk about how to keep medications from landing in the wrong hands.

At-Home Disposal Technques:

Find your medication bottles, and empty out the contents. This might be pills, liquids, and even patches. The next step is you want to pick a system that you would use. The are three home options to choose from:

Deterra

This is an at-home drug disposal system product. You rip off the top of the package and place your unused medications inside. The small package will hold about 15 pills or 2 ounces of liquid. Dump your pills in the container, add some liquid, and then seal the pouch. This will make the medications bind to the substance inside, and then it cannot be misused.

Cat Litter

Mix your medications with something that would be undesirable-- like cat litter. Put it in a zip-top bag or a container that can be resealed. We still want to empty our medications out of the original container. Mix it in and reseal.

Coffee Grounds

The last option is to use something like used coffee grounds. So you could mix the medications in here, stir them up, and then again you could put it in a Ziploc bag or some kind of sealable container where you would put them in, and pop a lid on, and then any of these could be just placed into the trash can.

The next step is to peel the prescription label off completely— this is so nobody can find identifying information about you or what possible prescription medications you are taking. The other way is to take like a permanent marker and to cross over anything so the name of the drug, your name, the prescription number, all those are important things to mark out.

Off-Site Disposal Opportunities

The other option you have is the drug takeback program where local police stations or other organizations will take back your drugs. This biannual event happens every April and October, the last Saturday of the month, from 10 am to 2 pm, and you can check out their website to see who's participating in your area.

Your other option is to find people who do this year-round. Sometimes local pharmacies will take back unused medications and have a drop box in their pharmacy. Even some police stations or sheriff offices will take back medications.

More Guidelines:

Leave medications whole. Don't crush them up.
Do not throw medications down the sink or flush them down the toilet unless the instructions say you can do so.