Patients haven’t had much guidance on what to do with used inhalers either. In the UK, the NHS advises returning medications to the pharmacist for disposal. In the US, the FDA advises that consumers throw out their used inhalers. Or not: “Depending on the type of product and where you live, inhalers and aerosol products may be thrown into household trash or recyclables, or may be considered hazardous waste and require special handling. Read the handling instructions on the label, as some inhalers should not be punctured or thrown into a fire or incinerator. To ensure safe disposal, contact your local trash and recycling facility.”
Increasingly, Purkins says, those patients and their doctors have concerns about the sustainability of inhalers. “You speak to patients, and they open their cupboard, and they have 25 used inhalers in there because they don’t want to throw them out; they think it’s a waste.” It’s one thing to flush expired pills and capsules down the toilet, but that method of disposal is not exactly feasible for inhalers; even if it could be done, flushing away unusable drugs presents a completely different moral issue than throwing out reusable plastic and electronic materials.
At the beginning of November, GlaxoSmithKline initiated an inhaler recycling program in the UK called “Complete the Cycle” in partnership with TerraCycle UK after having completed a six-month trial earlier this year. Consumers will be able to return their used inhalers to 200 Co-operative Pharmacies in England and Wales, and GSK is inviting other pharmacies to participate as well.
Patients can bring their used inhalers to participating pharmacies and deposit the entire inhaler in a special recycling box. TerraCycle collects the boxes once a month and then disassembles the inhalers. For Diskus inhalers, the blister strip is removed and “treated by a specialist process in accordance with clinical guidelines.” For MDIs, cans are crushed, then the propellant is recovered and used as fuel in high temperature incinerators and in kilns. All other inhaler materials are recycled.
During the pilot program, which involved 40 locations of the Co-operative Pharmacy in southeast England and south Wales, patients returned approximately 10% of the GSK inhalers purchased, or about 6,000 devices. The Co-operative Pharmacy’s Fiona Caplan-Dean, Clinical Services Manager, commented: “We are delighted to be able to offer this simple yet effective service to customers, and believe together we can make an important difference to our environment. As a responsible and ethical business, it is important to take a lead in sustainable initiatives like these.”
According to GSK, the amount of propellant recaptured during the trial period “is equivalent to preventing the release of approximately 35 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2).” “As a company we want to champion and lead sustainability standards for the pharmaceutical industry,” GSK Commercial Operations Director Nick Lowen, said in a company statement; “We are fully committed to finding innovative ways to increase our use of renewable materials and create less waste.”
