Paracetamol could be packaged in card....surely....?

[Bearnecessity]

Just so sick that we are not shifting away from plastic harder or faster...

@frogsbreath

You should read up on the Tylenol murders to know why food and medicine packaging is so robust now. A local food refill shop to me has a blister packet recycling box but it charges I think 30p-50p to cover the cost of the initiative.

Isn't it crazy to think you used to be able to just walk into the drugstore and pick a bottle up off the shelf and open it?!

[quote qualitygirl]@cuttlefishgame because the US, U.K. Europe have different regulations.

@Bearnecessity but you don't have a concrete answer [/quote]
Well DOH - I know that.

This thread is about minimising packaging, and if in many other developed countries it is perfectly safe to sell medication in larger quantities (and thus saving a huge amount of unnecessary packaging) then why can't the UK do the same?

Many companies are switching to corn starch based plastics that are compostable/fully biodegradable. So we don’t need to regress to card, glass, etc. You might not have noticed that many “plastic” things you buy are actually not plastic.

Another thank you for the super drug tip as I’ve always felt uncomfortable about the amount of used blister packs dh and I throw away.

@KilledByWitches there's a device called a pill bob which does the taking out of blister packs for you, your pharmacy might sell them?

Yes - that was before there were limits on how much you could buy in one transaction. That serves no purpose in my opinion, as it would be easy to stockpile by buying them from different shops or in successive visits.

Before the limit one hospital I worked at had a shop in reception.

Patients would walk up from a hospital ward, with the charcoal still clinging to their faces and buy enough paracetamol to overdose again.

The shop was asked to sell only small packs so you could buy a couple for headache, they refused.

Having to go around different places does make some people think and the hospital shop being limited I'm sur ehas saed lives.

I used to wonder about the amount of packaging on my blister pack of Sumatriptan, but the leaflet has to go in the box too. There has to be certain information on there legally and it takes up so much room

It's low down my list tbh. Food packaging is my bug bear.

I think we need to look at other stuff before blister packs.

It's not that long since Irn-bru was sold in returnable glass bottles.

Go back a few decades (ask your granny) beer and jam were both sold in returnable bottles.
Butter and bread came in waxed paper.

Products were made locally Inc furniture and toys now everything is shipped round the globe.

Blister packs are high on my radar at the mo cos I have a god awful cold and I am getting through them like nobody's business.....

Fruit and veg packaging would be next on my agenda...

Along with the rest of it obviously...

@qualitygirl

You can't just change the packaging of any drug unfortunately. They go through stability studies and that includes packaging. If they are in packaged in card then they are more susceptible to dampness and/or bacteria/mould growth. The expiry date would be different, they conditions needed for storage would change and that would then have an effect on the drug itself. And that's just me talking simplistically unfortunately...

Also to add to this excellent explanation… A lot of tablets used to be issued by pharmacists into bottles form larger dispensing containers. Pharmacists are human and they’d sometimes rarely make mistakes but that isn’t acceptable when it comes to drugs. It is also much more expensive to keep redispensing medicines out of larger containers into smaller ones. Blister strips, as they’re called, ensure safety and are much more easily controlled in terms of batch audit trails if something is wrong- the experation date and individual batch number is printed on the strips at time of manufacture. Sorry to say It is one of the few cases that the use of non recyclable materials is acceptable currently, but packaging technologists are looking at bio degradable materials - it’s just that they haven’t come up with something that provides the stability and security needed yet.

I agree there's an issue with packaging waste I general, but I'm not sure medicine's is the place to start

I really don’t understand the limit on how many you can buy. In the states I could buy 500 without any questions being asked

@hotmeatymilk

Superdrug recycles any brand of medicine blister pack. Obviously that’s not a cure-all for plastic production and consumption but better than landfill.

That's fantastic news!

THANK YOU! This has been bugging me for sooooo long.

(Now off to check my local Superdrug does actually accept them...)

www.terracycle.com/en-GB/brigades/medicine-packet-uk

@InDubiousBattle

Blister packaging of paracetamol reduced suicide deaths. I imagine there's also a benefit to them being sold in something light and waterproof.

Does it actually reduce suicide overall though, or do people who previously would have killed themselves with paracetamol now jump off bridges or gas themselves in cars instead?

... And it does!

Magic. . I shall set myself up a little recycling box in the medicine cabinet this very day....

I found out yesterday that YOU CAN RECYCLE THESE!!!

Apologies for shouting but I feel so sick about this as I need to take a fair amount of pills, but found out that a company called Terracycle will recycle these via Superdrug branches. It started Jan 2021 apparently and was formerly in local independent pharmacies but the amount the public brought in to be recycled was too high for small branches to manage (yay!) so Superdrug took it on.

www.terracycle.com/en-GB/brigades/medicine-packet-uk

www.superdrug.com/dgfs/waste-recycling

Some more background here pharmaceutical-journal.com/article/news/terracycle-scales-back-medicines-packet-recycling-scheme-after-overwhelming-uptake

Haha in my excitement I missed that someone else has already posted the scheme!! 😁😊😂 such brilliant news isn’t it

Can't say too often, Tomatalillo that SUPERDRUG HELPS RECYCLE BLISTER PACKETS.

@hotmeatymilk

Superdrug recycles any brand of medicine blister pack. Obviously that’s not a cure-all for plastic production and consumption but better than landfill.

I did not know that, thank you. Dh is on 8 packs of meds a month so we have a lot of blister packs.

Our councils plastic recycling is very basic. I have to take tetras to Tesco.

I should note I haven’t actually used the Superdrug scheme, I’ve just piled up 8,000 blister packs in a bag for life gathering dust under the stairs. Ditto contact lenses and packets (there’s an optician scheme for that too). Still, they’re not in landfill.

Thanks Perking! 😁😁

This is how my HRT is packaged. I can't tell you how much it annoys me and not just because of the plastic on plastic

Feeling your pain there @silverpixies....

@blacksax

We get through a lot of Piriton in this house - 3 family members with allergies - and years ago they used to sell it in little glass pots with 100 (I think) in them. I used to get them on prescription. When they introduced blister packs the price per tablet shot through the roof, and the quantity reduced drastically. Even buying the generic chemist own brand ones the price is ridiculous.

Not to mention the sheer waste of all that plastic.

Piriton is available online in pots of 500. I get it for my daughters allergies and for the family dog. Its pretty cheap (I think) at about £15.

DH works in pharmaceutical research, blister packaging has been shown to be the most effective way of packaging medications.