Pärnu pharma waste collection box scheme addresses incorrect disposal issues
Pärnu is trialing pharmacy waste collection boxes for safe disposal of prescription and over-the-counter meds residues, packaging, info leaflets, and other refuse.
For an initial six weeks, boxes installed in all city general pharmacies can be used to dispose of medicine residues and all other pharma-related waste, in a Ministry of Social Affairs pilot project.
The collection boxes can even be used to dispose of syringes and razor blades.
Pharmacies have long been obliged to accept medicinal waste, but the ministry wants to make handing it in easier for consumers and more efficient for pharmacists.
The trial period will assess medicine waste return habits, volumes, and costs.
"We have to raise public awareness more, create convenient opportunities for them to bring back medicines and also find a solution so that pharmacists don't have to spend their valuable time sorting waste. This project will last until the end of October and it has been carried out together with pharmacists, waste handlers, and art academy students, who at the end of the project will conduct a more thorough study on whether the box proved useful. They will ask people whether it somehow increased their appetite and willingness to bring medicines back, and at the end of the project we want to find out how we can make this journey so that the costs of bringing medicines back would be as small as possible both for people and for pharmacies, because today there are also funding problems there," Ministry of Social Affairs Secretary General Maarjo Mändmaa said.
The Ministry of Climate meanwhile states that most pharmaceuticals waste still ends up in mixed household garbage; only a fifth gets collected via the correct vectors, in other words waste stations, hazardous waste collection points, and pharmacies.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte, Marko Tooming
