Just took a bag of unwanted prescription medications to the Pharmacy.
A mixture of all sorts of stuff which has cluttered the cupboard for far too long it seems.
Anyway, I offered my “goodie-bag” and she gently advised me:
“Next time, please take them out of their cardboard boxes and hang onto the separate paper instructions… you can recycle that lot yourself.
You just give me the tin-foil packs/whatever…”
I offered to take them home and do the necessary, but she just smiled from behind her mask and whisked the whole lot away…
Hurrah… now we’ve a whole shelf free for exciting stuff like shower gel…
I thought I would pass on her instructions, in case any of you have a surfeit of medical pills and potions which need to be disposed of… safely.
Perhaps check with your Pharmacy first, but I reckon they all offer a similar service.
(incidentally, we’ve not been deliberately wasteful… excess happens when prescriptions
are changed etc and stuff gets left to one side.)
I had a clear out a while back, and just handed in the actual drugs without boxes and soon. Which they accepted, so this does seem to be standard practice.
Thanks for this advice Stella. Very useful, and topical because we have just started to fill a ‘goodie bag’ with half-used packets of drugs and I was wondering how it would all be received at the pharmacy. Now I know what to do !
Thanks for that - just the information I’ve been looking for! I have so much in the way of antidepressants etc etc! Will check with our pharmacy!
Hoped that they would be recycled somehow but evidently not.
What I took were out of date.
I’m seriously thinking of asking our Pharmacist if there is a method of “recycling” in-date stuff but as it’s medication … which has been in private hands and therefore under no control… it might be deemed safer to “bin 'em”…
If anyone get’s the “official answer” before I do… please post it on this thread…
cheers
In UK there isn’t a way of the pharmacist taking dispensed medication back for use. Even if you’ve taken just one step outside the door of the pharmacy and it’s all still sealed in a stapled bag that’s just been handed to you by the pharmacist.
For expensive drugs though the pharmacist seemed to be saying that for unopened ones there is some sort of scheme for sending them to places abroad that might need them.
If that’s how strict the UK is then I’m sure France will be even stricter.
There are various semi-official and unofficial networks to send unused medication to countries that need them. Medical Aid for Africa is one that operates in the UK collecting unused drugs and sending them elsewhere. But not drugs that have expired.
This is good of you.
No need for the pharmacy to see what it is, they have ‘hazardous waste’ disposal systems. Expired meds, aside from being ineffective can actually be dangerous, so ‘waste’ it is. Even Paracetamol. (Kidney and liver emojis here.) I have long handed in the empty asthma inhaler cartridge (without the plastic pump) because even that still has something hazardous to others that shouldn’t end up in recycling, our soil or water. Something else I have learned since moving to France is the rather sensible prescription system only allows for issue month by month, which although requiring multiple trips stops my having expired medicine on hand. I cannot say enough good things about healthcare I have found in France!
