Pharmaceutical Waste Disposal & Recycling Services

You shouldn’t leave pharmaceutical waste lying around, especially if you produce large volumes of waste each day. If you work in a clinical facility, you need to ensure such waste is taken to your designated waste collection point three times a day. This ensures the waste is stored securely, minimising the chance of contamination or causing harm to others.

Daily, weekly or fortnightly services are also available to align with your storage  .

If tablets have expired, the protective packaging is damaged, or they’re simply leftover from a condition and no longer needed, they require proper disposal. One way to dispose of tablets in the UK is to return them to pharmacies for removal. Do not crush the tablets or mix with other medicines or substances.

When you have lots of old tablets, it can be easiest to arrange pharmaceutical waste collection with Business Waste. We’ll provide you with the relevant bins or bags for the tablets you have and collect them to dispose of in a safe and legal manner.

You can easily recycle tablet boxes and packaging with cardboard recycling in most cases. Those that come in bottles can be recycled depending on their material – such as with glass waste or plastic waste.

Pharmaceutical waste management is essential to protect both people and the environment. Especially with hazardous medicinal waste, proper management avoids the potential of harming human health and contaminating land, water, and air if such waste ends up in landfill.

As a business, you also have a duty of care to safely store and dispose of pharmaceutical waste in the proper way. Managing this carefully should ensure any such waste your company produces is dealt with appropriately, avoiding potential fines for improper disposal of pharmaceutical waste.

Reducing pharmaceutical waste avoids excess spending on medicines and cuts the amount sent for incineration, which can release toxic gases into the environment. There are a few things businesses and individuals can do to try and reduce pharmaceutical waste:

• Improve stock control with proper rotation and date checking
• Use medicines within expiry dates to avoid unnecessary waste
• Avoid excess dispensing by checking if patients already have relevant medicines
• Regular stock checking so there’s no over ordering
• Timely ordering to avoid medicines arriving too late and being wasted

Explore more ways to reduce waste.

Pharmaceutical waste containers colours differ based on what type of clinical waste they store. Lid colours are different to show what they can contain. These colours are generally:

• Blue lid – pharmaceutical waste such as expired medicines and contaminated products like gloves and masks.
• Black lid – also for pharmaceutical waste such as paracetamol, cough medicine, and more.
• Yellow lid – infectious clinical waste contaminated with blood and medicines.
• Orange lid – sharps waste including needles, syringes, and more.
• Purple lid – cytotoxic and cytostatic waste like hormone and chemotherapy medicines.
• Red lid – anatomical waste including infectious and non-infectious body parts.
• Black and yellow striped – non-infectious waste and pharmaceutical or chemical waste.

Any expired, unused or unwanted medicinal product or item contaminated with pharmaceuticals, including controlled drugs, cytotoxic and cytostatic medicines, and associated items such as vials, patches and PPE.

Store separately in approved containers and arrange licensed collection. It must never go into the general waste or down drains.

To authorised treatment facilities for secure destruction, reducing the risk of environmental pollution or medicine misuse.

Non-hazardous but still controlled medicines such as over-the-counter tablets, syrups, and certain prescription drugs. Purple-lidded bins are required for cytotoxic and cytostatic waste.