Ways to reuse old prescription bottles

by Jen (July 14, 2008)

Prescription medicine bottles can’t be recycled in the US (I’m not sure about other countries). It’s not always an issue of the plastic being non-recyclable: part of the problem is that safety regulations prevent reusing the containers for a number of reasons. In a nutshell, the very things that make the containers safe enough for medications is what makes them difficult to recycle, and the very laws that protect us from getting contaminated medicines are what make them difficult to reuse.

You can generally return your own medicine containers for your refills, so consider doing this before you phone in your next prescription. It’s extra work for you, but if your drugstore’s on the way to work and they’re open when you leave in the morning, it’s easy. Get to know your pharmacists if possible so they’ll learn to expect a bottle from you whenever they come across your order for a refill, and that’ll cut down on (or hopefully eliminate) the times they refill into a new bottle without thinking.

But even if we all do that, there’s a lot of plastic waste ending up in landfills from these bottles, so until the medical industry and government oversight agencies figure out a better alternative, the greenest thing we can do with these bottles is reuse them.

Programs that reuse them

Odds are you can’t reuse every prescription bottle your family goes through in a year, let alone a lifetime. Fortunately, some vets will take old bottles, sterilize them and re-use them to dispense animal medications. There are also charitable organizations that reuse these bottles to dispense medications in third world countries. Unfortunately, there’s no list of charities that do this. I invite anyone who’s found a charity who recycles these bottles to post its contact info in the comments, no matter how local the charity is.

Free clinics and homeless shelters may also take and reuse these containers. Call around the ones in your area to see. Try your local Union Rescue Mission for starters.

Around the house/office

Be sure to sterilize bottles before putting anything in them that might conceivably wind up in a mouth - that includes kids and pets. Even if you’re storing something completely inedible in them, I would dunk these bottles in boiling water before reusing them, just to be safe.

• Store craft supplies. Little beads and fixtures can be stored in these. Keep the caps, and you never have to worry about them spilling again. (Except when you have them open, of course.)
• Store hardware. Nails, screws and other small bits of hardware fit into these and, as with the crafts, you never have to worry about them spilling again.
• Store Barbie shoes. By now you’re getting the idea: you can store any collection of tiny things in these. This is a great way to round up Barbie shoes and other small toys so they’re all in one place (and not your vacuum cleaner).
• Glue them together to make a custom drawer or desktop organizer. Get the bottles arranged in the drawer the way you want them. Pick them up and put them on another surface, carefully mimicking the arrangement you had in the drawer as you glue them together.
• Pen holders, paperclip holders, etc. Your business can stop buying little dishes for your paperclips and pens and start using prescription bottles. Cover them with recycled magazine pages or junk mail to make them look nice (you could get really fancy or funky with this!).
• Make a mini-sewing kit. Put a few buttons, some thread, some needles, etc. in a bottle and keep it with you for “wardrobe malfunctions.” From Trashformations.
• Make a mini-first aid kit. Put cotton balls, bandaids, alcohol pads, etc. in and keep it with you. From Trashformations.
• Store mixed acrylic paints. Use these bottles to mix acrylic paints. If you don’t use a batch all in one project, stuff a layer of Saran wrap down in the bottle, against the paint, to close out as much air as possible. The paint may need to be thinned slightly next time, but it’s still usable.

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