Sorting out the confusion: How to properly dispose of your medicines and their packaging

It's common to accumulate various medical products at home. Whether it's leftover medication after recovering from an illness or an impulse purchase of a new dietary supplement, these items often sit forgotten in cabinets or drawers until we reencounter them.

Sooner or later, the need arises to organise our home medicine cabinet. This task must be handled practically, especially since the disposal process for such waste isn't always straightforward.

Separating unneeded medications or their packaging is essential for disposing of them correctly. Empty medicinal product packages should be sorted by material.

Cardboard boxes or leaflets belong in the blue bin for paper. Plastic bottles from syrups should be placed in the yellow bin for plastics and metals, as should tubes from ointments (classified as cosmetic waste). Glass containers go in the green bin for glass.

Pill blisters, made from plastic and aluminium, require proper sorting to prevent environmental harm. However, this particular mix of materials—foil, plastic, and aluminium—can not be recycled due to the difficulty of separating them effectively. Thus, blister packs, provided they are empty and the medication has been used, should be disposed of in the mixed waste bin, not the plastic bin, to avoid common recycling errors.

Unused or expired medicines must never be thrown in the bin. The chemicals they contain can be harmful to the environment, and when mixed with other substances in waste, they can have unpredictable reactions, potentially leading to soil and groundwater contamination.

To avoid these risks, expired or unnecessary medicines should be taken to special bins at pharmacies. If you can't locate these bins, ask the pharmacist. This procedure also applies to blisters containing unused medication. An alternative is selective municipal waste collection points, though taking them to a pharmacy is quicker and simpler.