Cleaned out a kitchen drawer the other day and found the remaining pills of a prescription I came home with from the second surgery 2 years ago. Soon as I left the hospital and got home there was no more pain so I didn't need to finish the bottle. The pharmacy we usually take old drugs to won't take them since they are a controlled substance so she gave me the instructions for their proper disposal but the thought occurred on the way home.....is that stuff compostable and will it hurt anything to try?
Well... You might get plants that act funny? I have no idea, toni. I would be scared to try since it's a semi-synthetic medication.
Our local Police station takes any old prescriptions, no questions asked. Just put it in a plastic bag, drop it in the container at the station. Done!! Jerry
Haven't public health departments been finding pharmaceuticals in the drinking water of major metropolitan areas? Things like mood stabilizers, lipitor, anti-convulsants, sex hormones? Maybe it is from people excreting them or just flushing down the toilet. I would think trying to compost the drugs is a better bet than flushing, Toni. I wonder what the police dept does with the collected drugs Jerry.
Our police department, for whatever reason, no longer accepts old drugs whether they are OTC or prescription and the pharmacy that does (not a drug store but a true Pharmacy) can not accept 'controlled substances' which leaves me with a problem of what can I do with them?
Does your town have recycling days when they take old cans of paint, turpentine, herbicides? Maybe your pharmacist can suggest something? But, honestly Toni I can't imagine that your prescription bottle has all that much quantity to worry about. Bury it?
As I first mentioned, the lady at the pharmacy gave me a sheet of instructions on how to safely dispose of them in the trash.....I was just wondering if anyone knew if they could be put in the compost barrel without harming the finished product.
My druggist said to place things like this in an empty hard plastic bottle filled with shredded paper, then burn it and when cool place the melted burnt plastic in the trash . If any residuals are left after the burn, when the plastic is recycled it will be mostly inert and will be removed in the chemical recycling process . Just wait and make sure it is completely cool before adding to the trash. Plastic can stay hot quite a while. I would not compost them,, you do not know what residuals will be left in the finished product or soil. If you burn it as I said,, I would not be close enough to breathe any of the smoke.
We have no way of burning it living in the city. One of the recommendations from the information sheet published by either the CDC or the FDA that the pharmacist gave us, was to put them into a bag dog poop or soiled cat litter and put it in the trash and there were several other recommended ways. So I know how to safely dispose of them. But my question is still......is it compostable?
Hydrocodone is a synthetic opiate, from what I know (which is not a lot) is that it would always stay the same so I think not. No matter what you do all the properties still remain and do not change. So even if you threw it in the compost pile the hydrocodone would still be hydrocodone only smaller particles/molecules.
I am glad our police station takes them and I am not sure what they do with them...I just make sure we take our name off of them but always leave the name of the drug showing. I have even taken prescriptions that I had left from the vet.
For whatever reason our police department and others around here stopped taking them and the only other place locally that does take old medicines to dispose of is a real Pharmacy (not a big drug store) but they can not take the meds that are called 'controlled substances' by the DEA. So I ended up mixing them in a bag of used cat litter and 'stuff' and threw them away.
There are already way too many medical substances found in the local water supply from people flushing unwanted drugs so adding more isn't a good thing.
