Medicines Waste Management
This campaign looks to reduce the number of medicines that are ordered unnecessarily on repeat. It is estimated that approximately 1.6 million items of medicines are wasted unnecessarily in Coventry and Warwickshire each year. In an effort to reduce this number, the NHS is encouraging people to ‘only order what you need’ and to ‘Stay Well, Stay Safe, and Stay Green’.
- Stay well – Unused medicines expire and might not work as we want them to. Keeping big stocks of medicines at home can also make drug shortages worse.
- Stay Safe – Having big stocks of medicines at home be a danger to pets and children. People are also being reminded that medicines are only prescribed for them and should not be shared.
- Stay green – The best way to manage medicines waste is to give them to a pharmacist, this stops them polluting rivers and waterways. Medicines also cannot be recycled or used by anyone else once they have left the pharmacy.
