Pharmacy Waste Disposal

As a free service Bureta Pharmacy can take back unused medication for proper recylcing or destruction.

We cannot re-use returned medicine in the pharmacy for several reasons - we've already claimed for the cost of the medicine, and we cannot gurantee the quality of medication that has not been stored correctly. 

There are several ways we do manage returned medicine:

• We send most solid dose forms and small liquid volumes to an organisation in Auckland that incinerates the medication at high temperatures - basically turning it to dust.
• If the medicine is in good condition and not far past its expiry date (within 3 months) then we send it to the islands through Medical Aid abroad.
• For sharps we offer funded yellow sharps containers as a free servce - once full, they are returned to the pharmacy and we ship these to Auckland for incineration.
• For cytotoxic medication which is dangerous to handle, we have funded purple sharps containers - i'm not sure what happens to the contents of these, but at least its not being disposed of into the envirnoment.