Hey, Jennifer! How Can I Recycle Old Medications in Kane County?
- Editor’s Note: Kane County Recycling Coordinator Jennifer Jarland is herself one of Kane County’s great natural resources. In addition to coordinating the county’s super-popular recycling events and a handful of the most-read pages on the Kane County website, Jarland is a board member of the Illinois Recycling Association, and is a founding member of the Illinois Food Scrap Coalition.
- (SIDE NOTE TO LOCAL MEDIA: Please feel free to recycle this article.)
Hey Jennifer Jarland! How Do I Safely Recycle Old Medications?
Jennifer Says …
This is a question I answer frequently, and so I am happy to share it with a wider audience here. This article will talk about where you can recycle medications in Kane County and provide information about the annual DEA Drug Take Back Day scheduled for this month.
First of all, please do not flush prescription medication down the toilet, where the chemicals enter the water stream, threatening the health of the ecosystem of the Great Lakes and other drinking water sources. Properly disposing of medications keeps medicine out of the hands of someone who might abuse them and also protects the environment. For more information on keeping pharmaceuticals out of the Great Lakes, see the list of resources below.
Kane County is fortunate to have quite a few year-round collection locations. These locations are only for prescription and over-the-counter medications. Please take pills and capsules out of original bottles before placing them in a clear re-sealable bag for delivery. Orange plastic med bottles are not recyclable.* White plastic bottles can be recycled in your blue bin once emptied.
Please note that these drop-offs do NOT accept supplements, vitamins, liquid medicines, or sharps/ syringes/ needles! Supplements like vitamins are not controlled supplements and do not pose a hazard, so they can go in with your regular trash. There are very few return programs for syringes nationally, and there are none in Kane County, so we must rely on safe disposal — the recommended process for discarding needles — or mail-in programs.
The Drug Enforcement Administration’s annual Prescription Drug Take-Back Day will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 26, 2015, at participating locations nationwide. These locations will be open to all residents.
There are currently seven collection locations in Kane County registered for the event, as listed below. Please check the DEA website closer to the event day to see if additional locations have registered.
Consumers who are unable to visit a location on Take-Back Day can access this list of year-round locations in Kane County or can search the IL EPA’s list of medication disposal locations.
During the 2014 event, thousands of DEA-coordinated collection sites across the country accepted tablets, capsules, and all other solid dosage forms of medicines, including prescription painkillers and other controlled substance medications, and the DEA collected 617,150 pounds (309 tons) of unwanted medication. In four years and nine Take-Back Days, consumers have disposed of at least 4.8 million pounds (2,411 tons) of unwanted medication.
More Kane County recycling information can be found at the Kane County Recycles webpages.
Questions? Contact Kane County Recycling Coordinator Jennifer Jarland at 630-208-3841 or recycle@countyofkane.org
Keeping Pharmaceuticals Out of the Great Lakes
* Why Orange Plastic Med Bottles Are Not Recyclable
Orange plastic med bottles are not recyclable because there is not a market for that type of plastic. Do not put them in your blue bin, please. You can put them in the trash or they ARE reusable! They’re great for paperclips, beads, sewing needles, spices, and many other little things.
