A vast one-month multimedia campaign is organized by the approved eco-organization Cyclamed to encourage residents to return their expired or unused medicines to pharmacies.
This large format Cyclamed campaign in regional language which started this Monday, November 4 should remind us of the good habits to adopt. Those of sorting, recycling and avoiding throwing away your medications everywhere and anywhere. In a way, it is about gradually becoming an eco-citizen concerned with preserving your health and that of others.
We all have boxes of medicines in our drawers and medicine cabinets, sometimes new or opened and even in large quantities for the most medically treated patients.
A person who suffered from cancer remembers the extensive list of medications that were prescribed to him. Towards the end of her chemotherapy, she only consumed half of it and brought back many boxes of painkillers and other anti-inflammatory tablets from the pharmacy.
Since then, she regularly brings back what she does not consume and above all checks, in any doctor’s prescriptions, what medications she already has before buying more.
This sorting is carried out under specific conditions. You should not bring back the packaging, only the tablets or bottles of syrup, ampoules, aerosols, tubes of ointment, cream or gel before taking them to the pharmacy.
But be careful, recycling medicines does not mean that they will be used for other patients but that they will be properly destroyed by incineration so that there is as little impact as possible on the environment. Marc Ledy, president of the Order of Pharmacists of Guyana, specifies: “We collect these medications which are put in cyclamed boxes. They will be transported to France. In the French Overseas Territories, only Martinique has a treatment system, the other overseas regions send these medicines back to France where they will be processed in energy recovery plants.”
Indeed, once degraded, drugs can prove very toxic to humans, polluting the environment right down to groundwater.
According to the BVA 2024 study, the “Cyclamed reflex” is well anchored: 8 out of 10 French people (81%) say they bring their MNUs to the pharmacy at least once a year. Our fellow citizens are stepping up their efforts to carry out increasingly refined sorting at home. Among the 81% of French people who say they return their MNU to the pharmacy, 86% of them also put the completely empty packaging that protected the medication in the selective sorting.
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