My guest today is Heidi Sanborn, Executive Director of the California Product Stewardship Council, a powerful network of local governments, non-gocernment organizations, businesses and individuals who believe “people should be able to enjoy safer products made without the harmful and toxic components which jeopardize the safety and health of our children, families, and communities.” Today we’ll be talking about how pharmaceutical collection sites can safeguard the environment and our water supply, and help prevent drug abuse by children and teens. Heidi has been a leader in the solid waste industry in California for 22 years, working with industry, government and the public to reduce waste, improve product design and recyclability, and implement cost-effective policies which protect the health of communities. Collaborating with local government leaders, Heidi was one of two original co-directors of CPSC in 2007 to change the way product waste is funded and managed in California; she has since become a nationally recognized thought leader and driver for innovative product stewardship programs across the country. Heidi’s collaborative, tenacious problem-solving approach has delivered unprecedented success in developing Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) public policy at national, state and local levels. She has engaged diverse stakeholder groups to create and promote best-in-class product stewardship programs for pharmaceuticals, mercury thermostats, carpets, paint, fluorescent lights, and batteries. Heidi speaks throughout the world to raise awareness about product stewardship. She teaches about EPR for the California Resources Recovery Association, and has been frequently published on the topic. Heidi earned a B.A. in Political Science – Public Service from the University of California at Davis and a Master of Public Administration from the University of Southern California. She lives in Sacramento with her husband Brad and three rescue dogs and enjoys adventure travel. www.calpsc.org/products/pharmaceuticals
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Proper Disposal of Pharmaceuticals
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Heidi Sanborn
Date of Broadcast: November 4, 2013
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world.
It’s Monday, November 4, 2013. And we’re having a beautiful autumn day here in Clearwater. There’s actually a breeze. I went out for a walk this morning. It’s so nice to walk and have the wind blowing around me, and have it be cold, and wear a flannel shirt, and all those things that are nice about autumn—just a really nice morning.
Today, we’re going to talk about the proper disposal of pharmaceuticals. And this is very important for a lot of reasons.
Pharmaceuticals, when they’re disposed of improperly, can get into the environment, into our water supplies, and children and teens can get them and abuse them as drugs.
And so, in order to solve these problems, there are some things that can be done, and our guest today is going to tell us about those.
My guest is Heidi Sanborn. She’s the Executive Director of the California Products Stewardship Council—a powerful network of local governments, non-government organizations, businesses and individuals who believe that people should be able to enjoy safer products, maybe without the harmful and toxic components which jeopardize the safety and health of our children, families and communities.
I totally agree.
Hi, Heidi.
HEIDI SANBORN: Hi.
DEBRA: Thanks for being with me today.
HEIDI SANBORN: I’m so happy to be here. Thanks for the invitation.
DEBRA: You’re welcome. First, can you tell us what product stewardship is?
HEIDI SANBORN: Product stewardship is when the manufacturers of products look at the entire life cycle of the impact of those products and take some share in the responsibility for those impacts.
DEBRA: Good idea! So the California Products Stewardship Council, how long has it been around, and how and why did it get started?
HEIDI SANBORN: Well, we just had our 6th year anniversary. And it actually started because other recycling organizations in California really were focusing on just recycling, but we weren’t turning off the spigot. The waste was still coming, it was getting more toxic than ever. And we realized there needed to be approaches that dealt with greener design of products.
And so we started looking at different policy approaches. And that point, I was a consultant. I was actually writing a report to the State Waste Management Board at the time—it’s now CalRecycle—on what we should be doing with hazardous waste and policies that would be better fitted for those products that have no market, and that are dangerous and toxic and banned from disposal.
So, I did the research. And after looking at 60 different policy approaches around the world, I found that producer responsibility and product stewardship approaches were by far the most successful, and were in many different levels, not only in collection, but more importantly, in greener design and reducing toxic source.
DEBRA: I see on your website—which is C-A-L-P-S-C (California Product Stewardship Council), CALPSC.org—I see that you work in several different product areas with batteries, carpets, fluorescent lamps, paints, pharmaceuticals, thermostats and others. And today, we’re going to specifically be talking about pharmaceuticals. But if anybody is interested in this subject (as I hope you will be), there are other products that you can be looking at, what this organization is doing with.
And of course, this whole idea of looking at solving the problems of toxic waste by re-designing the product in the beginning is something that’s being talked about by a lot of people and a lot of manufacturers nowadays. It’s really good to see that trend, and I’m very, very happy to see your organization working on this.
So, how did you become interested in this subject?
HEIDI SANBORN: Well, when I became adviser to the chair of the Waste Management Board back in the year 2000, one of the first things she did was send me to a national conference called the National Recycling Coalition Conference.
I went and the first presentation I heard was [unintelligible 00:04:27] from the Product Stewardship Institute talking about producer responsibility and product stewardship and what that was. And I came back and told the chair we need to be focused on this in California because we can’t get to zero waste if things are continuing to be designed without end of life in mind.
We are not designing things to be recyclable, to be more durable, to be repairable. In fact, it’s going in the other direction. I can remember my Hoover vacuum, I would take to the Hoover repair store, and when I took my Hoover vacuum there a few years ago, they said, “No, it’s cheaper for you to buy a new one.” And I thought something’s going wrong here. We’re not doing this right. It’s creating huge amounts of waste.
So, we actually got, by 2002, into the state’s Strategic Plan for Waste Management. It included, not only getting to zero waste, but doing so, in part, to reproduce the responsibility policy models, where the producers have to pay some of the costs that they have externalized onto the public sector because right now, the economics are that they make a product, they sell it, they profit, and walk away. And the rest of us are left holding the bag.
DEBRA: That’s exactly how it is. Are these regulations in effect anywhere, where producers have to pay for the end?
HEIDI SANBORN: In fact, we’re one of the last major industrialized countries to embrace this policy model. It was started in Italy and German back in the 80’s, and they did it. It started as a packaging result. The citizens were so tired of over-packaging, they started leaving all their packaging in the grocery stores, and the store owners asked for some policy to stop this.
DEBRA: I love it.
HEIDI SANBORN: So it really is as sign of public demand, and when the public rises up to address an issue, the governments respond. Well, the first response of the government was to say, they should have a more of commanding control model. The producers should be in control, but they’ll be told how they’ll be in control.
Over years, that evolved away to what we call now, the true producer responsibility approach, which Canada and others have followed.
It’s really a performance-based system.
So if we hand the keys over to the industry to manage the product and end of life, we also give them all the power to control the how, and they keep their costs down, but it is performance-based, so the government will set the performance standard on the recycling rate—it’s normally a recycling rate or a convenience standard.
And then the industry just figures out how to get there. And they’re very, very good at it. They have reversed distribution systems, they know marketing well better than government, and can penetrate far deeper than government ever could.
It really is a much more private sector model, less government model. And it is the economic model that conservative economists have used for years, which is, make the polluters pay because once they have to pay, they’ll get those costs down.
If they have externalized them on to the public sector, there is zero financial incentive for there to change behavior.
DEBRA: I actually had never heard of those, and this is making me feel happy that you’re here today and talking about this because this really is the direction that I think that it needs to go—that if we take responsibility, if we know—I think, as individuals, we take responsibility for our own actions, but these corporations need to take responsibility for what it is that they’re making, and what effects it has on people and the environment. And I think if everybody did that then everybody would be thinking in the beginning, what it is that I’m creating, and what are the effects that it’s going to have out in the world.
I know that’s an issue that I’m always thinking about when I make something—even dinner. If I make a salad for dinner, I think, well, do I make a salad which will make my body healthy, or do I make junk food, of whatever your favorite food is, that won’t make my body healthy?
And in a way, that’s just a microcosm of the bigger question—it’s what are the end results going to be of our actions, and making those choices.
We’re going to take a break pretty soon, so I think what we’re going to do is when we come back, I’ll ask you the next question, and we can go on because otherwise, we’re only going to have a few seconds. We’re talking to day with Heidi Sanborn. She’s the Executive Director of California Product Stewardship Council, and they’re a network of local governments, non-government organizations, businesses and individuals who are doing things to have companies be more responsible for the products that they’re making, so that there is less waste, less toxic waste, and less problems in the world.
And I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio, and we’ll be back right after this to find out more about product stewardship, in particular, pharmaceuticals.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Heidi Sanborn, Executive Director of the California Product Stewardship Council. And we’re talking about pharmaceuticals, and Heidi and her organization run a program called “Don’t Rush to Flush,” which collects unused pharmaceuticals, so that they can be disposed of safely.
Well, Heidi, I have a lot of questions about this. First of all, could you tell us about the program, and what is the problem that the program solves?
HEIDI SANBORN: Well, the problem, as most people know, is we’ve got a huge drug abuse epidemic in this country, to the point now, we’re losing more young people to prescription drug overdoses than we are to illegal drug use, or car accidents.
And it has now become a major reason for collection of medications, so that we make sure they’re not sitting around the house where kids can get at them, dogs or small children could be poisoned.
The National Drug Control Strategy of 2013 indicates there are four major interventions, one of which is safe drug disposal, to increase return and take-back programs.
So what our organization did, and we just talked a lot about producers being responsible, in this area, we’ve not yet to date had a lot of support from the industry itself to collect medications. In fact, they’re still saying in the press that the best thing to do was put them in the trash with kitty litter and coffee grounds.
But we know that there are issues with that because landfills, they have water come through them that we call leachate. And even when it goes into a landfill, that leachate can [inaudible 00:11:33] and still goes to the same water treatment plant as though you might have flushed them. That still can’t get them all of them out.
There’s a lack of science on how much and what exactly chemicals. As you know, there are thousands of medications—what is getting through at the water treatment plant. And we can have a lot of arguments and discussions on that all day long.
What we know is that the low-hanging fruit is the pills that are getting flushed and put in the trash. And we know that according to EPA, the safest thing to do with these medications is send them to an EPA-certified incinerator, maybe down the road. That won’t be the best model based on the science. I don’t know. But today, that’s what they’re telling us.
So what we did was we started a program called “Don’t Rush to Flush” here in Sacramento and Yolo County, so we’re thankful to the Rose Foundation for giving us the grant to do it. And what we call producer responsibility was impossible because we were not getting support from the manufacturers of medications to pay for the program. But we did get the grant, and we did ask the local pharmacists if they would be willing to host a bin, if we paid for the bin, and then they paid for the disposal.
So it’s what we call producer responsibility transitional—in that others in the product chain are paying some of the costs for the end of life.
And thankfully, these pharmacists, we found six that were willing to do it. I will say that none of them were chain stores. They were all independent pharmacists with their own store. They were wonderful people that cared a lot about their community, and they agreed to host the bin and the pay disposal cost because every pharmacist has unused medications that either expire or for some other reason they have them, and they back call them through proper channels.
So they already add these new ones from the public to their existing back calling, and we’ve got a program. And then we just did all the PR and the billboards and the press around it.
And our goal is to prevent people from flushing them because we know we can’t get them all out at the water treatment plant, and also, to educate people that you really need to be careful. Medications have become extreme powerful and dangerous.
And we need to lock them up like guns—they can be that deadly.
And people are not treating them that way. They keep them in their medicine cabinet—it’s unlocked. And the kids are getting them. They get them from their grandparents when they visit on the weekends. They get them from all kinds of sources.
In fact, one study I saw said 70% of children that start on drug abuse path are getting them from family members unknowingly.
So it’s important for all of our safety to make sure that medications are locked up when you’re using them properly at home, and you’re making sure other people are not getting access to them. They’re also driving crime because seniors are taking the vast majority of medications. They take a lot of pain pills, and they’re not getting targeted for crime because of it because the people on drugs want to get those medications—in other words, good money on the streets.
This is an interesting topic for me because as we talked about in the last segment, I got into this from the waste management side. But really, with pharmaceuticals, they ended up in hazardous waste facilities but because there was no place else for them to go.
But is that the right place for them?
And in Canada, the manufacturers actually do take back and pay for it. It’s all done at pharmacies—all of it.
DEBRA: Did I understand you correctly to say that pharmacies themselves, the pharmacists have their own way of disposing of outdated pharmaceuticals? So they go to the correct place. It’s just us as consumers that are disposing of them incorrectly?
HEIDI SANBORN: Right, and we’ve been told—it’s interesting because different federal departments are saying different things. So the EPA says the safest thing is to put them into these controlled incinerators where they’ve got monitoring.
Then we have the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Agency, saying that for the controlled substances, the 10% of drugs that are really the most dangerous and addictive, that they should be flushed because they’re so dangerous, we don’t want them getting into the wrong hands.
So that’s counter to what EPA is saying. There’s been this back and forth.
And then we’ve got the Fish and Wildlife Service saying the best thing is to put them in the trash with kitty litter and coffee grounds.
So the public is getting mixed messages. In fact, we did a survey in our Don’t Rush to Flush program of the people, the doctors and the consumers. Doctors are telling us that they just don’t tell people what to do with them unless they’ve been asked because they don’t know what to tell them, so not even the doctors know.
But generally, most people understand they’re not supposed to flush them. The water districts don’t want them flushed. In fact, they call them emerging contaminants that medications are now starting to show up, and some of them in pretty high levels.
But they’re not even testing for most of them, so we don’t know what’s in the water.
DEBRA: We really don’t know what’s in the water. We need to take another break. My guest today is Heidi Sanborn. She’s the Executive Director of the California Product Stewardship Council, and their website address is CALPSC.org. California Product Stewardship Council dot org.
And I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio, and we’ll be back after this with more.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Heidi Sanborn, Executive Director of the California Product Stewardship Council, and they are working on manufacturers taking responsibility for the end results of their products, and how they get disposed of, and having there not be toxic chemicals in them—very good thing to do.
Heidi, can you tell us what has driven this issue to the forefront now?
HEIDI SANBORN: What’s really driven it is the drug abuse prevention issue, and seniors really wanting better options for their medication than to flush them, or put them in the trash.
So that’s how it came to the forefront. And for us, as I’ve said, our organization focuses on dangerous and toxic products that are more traditional like batteries and fluorescent lamps, and things like that.
So this was an interesting area for me to get into because it’s really more of a water issue than it is a waste issue. Pills take up very little volume in landfill, and we haven’t found yet huge amounts of them in the leachate, although there are new studies going on as more and more medications are being distributed. We can assume more will end up in the leachate, and in the water.
There’s so much more study to be done on that.
So really, it came from the drug abuse area. And that was not an area I was familiar with, but we are familiar with pharmaceutical take-back in other countries like France and Spain, where it actually started because the return of packaging, where they do have a producer responsibility model, the packaging for pharmaceuticals still had drugs in them, and they decided to start an actual collection program for the drugs that were coming back with packages.
So that’s how this started back in Spain and France.
DEBRA: Are a lot of other countries around the world, are they already doing this, and we’re the last ones to catch on?
HEIDI SANBORN: We just saw that Brazil, this last week, introduced a producer responsibility approach and asked the pharmaceutical industry to come back in 120 days with a whole plan on what they’re going to do not just with the drugs, but with the packaging, and also, how are they going to stop over-prescribing and getting more source reduction, so drugs really only go out when they need to, which would reduce how many end up having to be managed.
And so we really are behind as a country in this approach.
Canada, which is part of North America—and North America shares many of the same companies in all of North America, including manufacturers of drugs—they’ve have the stewardship model for 13 years in British Columbia.
And it’s very cost-effective. It’s less than $1000 a year per pharmacy to run the program. They collect the pills and have prepaid shipping pails that then get shipped straight to the incinerator. This is one of the simplest and most cost-effective programs that we know of.
You can imagine all the rules and how hard it is to move around big screen TVs or mattresses, but these are little, teeny, tiny pills. And unlike batteries, they don’t start fires. Unless mercury-containing lamps, they don’t have mercury.
It’s a very simple and cost-effective program when implemented correctly. And you wouldn’t even notice the change in the price to do. It’s less than a penny a prescription based on what we’ve seen up in Canada. In fact, they’ve told us these costs have never been passed on to the consumer.
So we are looking towards the exact same model that has been done in Canada. We assume the industry would like to do that model here because it is so effective and cost-effective. But yet, we have not seen industry support for that program yet, which is why the Alameda County Government passed the first in the country ordinance making the manufacturers of drugs take them back.
And then it was soon followed up by King County, Washington, which adopted the same ordinance June of this year. And we saw a lawsuit. Pharma sued Alameda County in the 9th Circuit Court saying that this was interstate commerce breach, in that it wasn’t fair to make people in Georgia pay for the program in Alameda. But the Judge found that their argument didn’t hold water, and found for Alameda. And then pharma appealed, so it’s now in the Appeals Court.
But this is a very important legal task, not just for pharmaceuticals, but for any problem product, thus, local government have the authority to go ahead and regular the manufacturers that sell into their jurisdiction if the state and the federal government fail to action, and the industry fails to step up.
We’ll see.
DEBRA: That is a very important question because we should be able to have some control over what comes into our areas. As a community, we should be able to say, “Don’t put these toxic things in our community. Don’t put these toxic things in our cities.”
And as individuals, we have the right to—I have the right to not buy something toxic and not bring it into my own home.
I think, as I’m looking around—I’ve been doing this work for more than 30 years, and when I first started, nobody was talking about it, about anything toxic way back more than 30 years ago. But now, there’s so much discussion about what we should be doing in order to make the world less toxic in our own homes, in our communities, in the manufacturing of products.
It’s just, I’m really, really happy to see the direction that that’s going.
So you talked about Canada. I was thinking when you say that that it’s probably easier in Canada to do the collection because they have centralized medical care, don’t they? They do.
HEIDI SANBORN: They do. But the collection points—the system of distribution is exactly the same in that they distribute drugs through the mail, and through pharmacies, just like we do. And so it’s the same exact program to return them.
And there, the medical companies, the pharmaceutical companies, I should say, have chosen to use pharmacies because they’re already accessed by most of the public. Most people do go to a pharmacy at least once a month. And they’re very conveniently located, and they have handicap accessibility.
So that’s where they chose in Canada to have the return system. And in fact, the DEA, Drug Enforcement Agency again, has proposed regulations to make it easier for these collection programs. And they’re indicating in the draft regulations that they’re going to want to see these come back only at pharmacies.
So it may be dictated the where, it could also be mailed back, but that is the convenient place for people to go, and that’s where people with the credentials to manage those drugs because they distributed them.
DEBRA: It makes sense to me that if you buy your drugs at a pharmacy that the pharmacy should take them back. Here in Florida, when I just recently went to Best Buy, and you walk in the front door of Best Buy, and they have all these bins where you can return your cords and your cell phones and all kinds of electronic things that you buy at Best Buy. You can just bring them back, and the bins are right next to the door.
And I happen to be going there because I needed to buy a new mouse. My mouse had croaked. And I brought my mouse with me, and I also had some computer cables that were no longer working because I had seen that collection spot the last time I went in Best Buy.
And so I put those in the bin, and I bought my new mouse. And when I went to the register to buy it, they took my old mouse.
I think that this idea of being able to return the products to the point where they’re purchased. I think is fantastic and it needs to be applied across the boards.
I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio, and we’ll be back after this to talk more about pharmaceuticals and safe disposal.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Heidi Sanborn, Executive Director of the California Product Stewardship Council. And we’re talking about pharmaceuticals, safe disposal and the effects that they have if they’re not disposed safely.
Heidi, what is the federal state and local government doing about the disposal and return of pharmaceuticals?
HEIDI SANBORN: Well, it’s interesting. This is one product type where we actually have activity at all three levels of government. As I mentioned, the federal government is currently reviewing their regulations from the Drug Enforcement Agency because they previously would not allow collection of controlled medicines, which are some of the really dangerous and addictive ones, unless there was a police officer or law enforcement present.
That simply is not cost-effective, and it can’t be done on a broad scale.
So the DEA has drafted regulations out that would allow for co-collection and at pharmacies. So we’re very excited and hopefully, those will be finalized in the next few months, which would open the door for a lot more cost-effective collections across the country.
There’s also discussion of a national producer responsibility bill being introduced, again, once those regulations are out.
Congresswoman Slaughter out of New York had introduced the bill before, but without those DEA regs, it made it very challenging to discuss. But they have had discussions at the national level on the water committees.
At the state level, there has been several states that have introduced various pharmaceutical bills doing different things from talk about retail take-backs and talk about hospitals and safe disposal. In fact, Wisconsin just introduced the bill, I guess, that would make it easier for them to allow local take-back because the feds haven’t moved fast enough.
The State of California, our organization, the California Product Stewardship Council, is a co-sponsor with the City of San Francisco, Alameda County, the Association of Retired Americans, and Clean Water Action of SB727, which is authored by Senator Hannah Beth Jackson from Santa Barbara. And it would do exactly what’s happening in Canada—just allow a producer-run and designed program with oversight from state government.
And that bill currently is in discussions and having negotiations. It’s still alive, and we look forward to hopefully seeing that through next year.
But in lieu of that, the local governments were tired of waiting. And that’s why Alameda, in July of 2012, passed the first ordinance in the country making the manufacturers pay. And as I said, they did win in the first court challenge by pharma.
We’re hopeful that the industry is realizing that it’s really in their best interest and the public’s interest to work together and find solutions together.
The do nothing option really needs to be off the table. It’s something that needs to be addressed, and there’s public demand for it, quite frankly, across the country.
We’re getting calls from county supervisors across the country that are interested in adopting the same ordinances. So if there’s anybody out there who is interested, just let us know, give us a call. We’d be happy to give you the model, and share with you how Alameda did it.
And then you can also follow Alameda’s Facebook page where they post a lot of information, including the ordinance itself, and all about the hearings, and what they learned in their investigations over many years. So they have Alameda Safe Medication Disposal Facebook page.
And CPC, our organization, has a newsletter, and a LinkedIn page, and Facebook, and we post a bunch of information as well.
You can also go to our website pharmaceutical page, and find all of these links, including to our Don’t Rush to Flush page, and how we’re working that program where the pharmacies actually pay for the disposal, which is another model.
DEBRA: And on my website, ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, I have a link to the pharmaceuticals page on the California Product Stewardship Council, so you can just go there and look for Heidi, and you’ll see the link there at the end with a description of the show.
So what can consumers do now at this point if anybody has some drugs that they need to dispose of who are listening? What should we do?
HEIDI SANBORN: Well, you need to locally at what is available. If you go to Earth 911 website, dot org, they are also posting where there are pharmaceutical collections. On our pharmaceuticals page, there are links to several other national organizations on drug abuse and prevention, and the DEA, that link to different local collection locations.
But you can go back to your own pharmacist and ask them why they aren’t if they’re not collecting. Because if they hear enough consumers asking for the service, they’ll realize it’s good business. That’s very important.
You can ask your doctor. The doctors need to be thinking about this because they really want good public health. They don’t want to see people getting sick maybe in the future because we haven’t addressed this issue at the source.
So they’re very interested in this. Keep them aware and educate them if they don’t know. I know many doctors don’t know what to tell people. So if you find out where collections are, let your doctor know, so they can tell other patients.
DEBRA: That would be a great idea.
HEIDI SANBORN: Even veterinarians.
DEBRA: Veterinarians, yes.
HEIDI SANBORN: Because they have drugs too, and here in Sacramento, the veterinary group was very interested in this, and has actually written the State Association of Vets that supported the legislation at the state level.
Law enforcement is very, very important. They’re very, very interested in this because of the public safety impacts. And they have been extremely supportive of take-backs and, in fact, have been hosting many of the bins.
We have five sites here in Sacramento and Yolo County that are at pharmacies, but one is also at a sheriff’s station.
So that’s another group to talk to and see if they would be willing locally to start a take-back program in lieu of waiting for the federal government to get it together on this issue, and get those DEA regs out and finished.
But you can also talk to your local legislators and ask them, “Why don’t you consider doing something like Alameda did?” or go to your state legislators and ask them because it really is going to take us all working together, and having those conversations in a public way.
In fact, that was just on public radio, and it’s supposed to run nationally. And pharmaceutical companies and Supervisor Miley from Alameda were interviewed.
So we hope that this is a big public discussion, but we all need to be careful and keep those drugs locked up. Make sure nobody is accessing them who shouldn’t be, and then work towards the solution on the final disposal [inaudible 00:33:21] public health and safety issue first and foremost.
DEBRA: I just wanted to go back to the water. You mentioned about water, and the pharmaceuticals getting into the water.
During the break, I was looking at a page, and I think I changed the page. Here it is.
So it says on the Don’t Rush to Flush page, it says, each year, $225-billion in medications is prescribed with that number expected to grow to $550-billion per year by 2017.
So it’s going to double in the next four years. That’s amazing.
HEIDI SANBORN: It’s mindboggling.
DEBRA: It is. Nearly 40% of prescribed medications aren’t taken and end up being improperly discarded or flushed. And then it says, studies have found that up to 80% of streams in the United States have measurable concentration of prescription drugs. And there have been studies that show that there are prescription drugs also in our tap water, that it’s all throughout the water system, correct?
HEIDI SANBORN: Yes. It is becoming pervasive. Europeans are looking at this. They had introduced some ideas that pharmaceutical companies might be made to be paid for the upgrades to water treatment plants because of it.
They backed down on that because of the opposition, but this is a big public discussion. And as we age, and our country is aging, we’re going to have a lot more medications prescribed. And we know that some just goes naturally through the body, and maybe excreted. That’s something we have to deal with as well, but making sure people get the right amount of the right drugs and only get what they need.
But one of the issues is that people are getting prescriptions for things with automatic renewals through the insurance company. And maybe they had a reaction to that drug after a few pills, and they don’t want it anymore. But they’ve got 30 pills in the first one, or maybe 90 days.
Not only does our health care costs go up because we’re paying for drugs we don’t need, but now, we have the cost of the waste.
And it’s not to say—we all appreciate our medications. We appreciate the medical community for providing these medications and making our lives better. We don’t necessarily with this particular product—our goal is not re-design. That’s unusual because most of the time, it is re-design for many products, like electronics. But that is not the case with this product type.
We don’t want them to feel hindered trying to make us better on how to design the drug. We just want a system that is only prescribing what is needed, and having a safe collection, so that we don’t have unintended consequences for those drugs that were left over.
DEBRA: Very good. I so appreciate your being on the show today because this is something that really needs to be talked about. And I learned so much about the responsibility throughout the supply chain that people should be doing.
We have about 30 seconds left. Is there anything short and quick you’d like to leave us with?
HEIDI SANBORN: That the power really is with the consumer, and that joining organizations like ours, donating to organizations like ours, being a good advocate, talking to those that you buy products from, no matter what the product, leaving your packaging where you buy it.
Sending the consumer signal that you don’t like over-packaging, you want safer return systems, you want the end of life thought of at the design phase, that’s what’s going to change corporate behavior because they want to make you happy. You actually have all the power.
DEBRA: Thank you so much. I argue with you, Heidi. And thank you for being on the show. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio.
