Recycling is probably not at the top of your list of priorities right now. Recycling is probably actually right at the bottom. But going through cancer treatment can cause a lot of waste that could potentially be recycled. Annoyingly, it’s not as easy as it could be to recycle that waste, and I really don’t understand why all hospitals, all pharmacies and to a lesser extent GP surgeries, aren’t helping. If I’d kept all of the items used over my treatment which could be recycled it would be a significant pile!
First up are the surgical face masks that hospitals and GP surgeries (amongst others) have been insisting we wear since 2020. As far as I’m aware, no hospitals offer recycling for these. Surely the most logical place to put mask recycling points would be next to the dispensing points! Get a mask when you enter hospital, and then deposit it as soon as you leave. Much better than chucking it in a rubbish bin outside where it’ll end up in landfill at best, or blown away to damage wildlife at worst. Some Wilko stores do offer mask recycling though! Check out their website to see if there’s a store near you in the scheme: https://www.wilko.com/en-uk/face-mask-recycling
Then there’s the medication you’re probably on. If you have any unused medication, don’t just chuck it in the bin or flush it down the toilet. Seriously, don’t. It’ll end up contaminating either water or land if you do that.
Remove any unwanted tablets/capsules/lozenges from their bottles or blister packs, and put the packaging to one side, then put the tablets/capsules/lozenges into a plastic bag. Take the bag along with any unwanted liquid/cream/aerosol medication to any pharmacy and they’ll dispose of it safely by incinerating it. They’ll ask you what the medication is to see if it needs extra-special handling, in case it’s cytotoxic or is a controlled drug — they’re not just being nosey for the sake of it, I promise.
Empty bottles, cardboard packaging and leaflets can be chucked into your standard household recycling.
Empty blister packs can be recycled at Superdrug pharmacies. Note that it’s only the stores with a pharmacy that can recycle blister packs. No questions will be asked when you recycle these, but they do need to be empty. I think that all pharmacies should be doing this, not just the Superdrug ones. I live in hope that eventually all pharmacies will do so, like all take back unwanted medication already.
(Edit February 2024: there are now ten Boots stores where you can recycle blister packs as part of a trial. They plan a wider rollout during 2024. An added bonus with Boots’ scheme is that if you recycle 15 empty blister packs via their Scan2Recycle scheme and get the voucher, then spend £10 in Boots within a couple of days and present that voucher, then you’ll get an extra 150 advantage card points. If you can’t be bothered with the extra faff of that you can just drop your empty blister packs into the appropriate recycling point anyway.)
That’s it! If you’re like me you could also contact your hospital’s social media accounts to ask if they can install mask and blister pack recycling points… and maybe contact your local GP surgery or CCG too… you could even ask Boots, Lloyds Pharmacy and any other pharmacies you use about recycling masks and blister packs… if you’ve got kids you could ask if their school wanted to get involved too… it’d be so much better for the environment to be able to recycle masks and blister packs more easily!
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