- In 2018 in France, 78% of the population said they brought back their unused drugs from pharmacies.
- However, awareness work is still needed on how to do it, but also on the risks run by those who continue to store their boxes of tablets.
“All tri-athletes, all sorting athletes. Return unused medication to the pharmacy. ” This Tuesday in Nantes, the eco-organization Cyclamed launched its new communication campaign on television and in some 21,000 pharmacies in France. Objective: to encourage even more French people to better recycle their unused pills or syrups, rather than throwing them in the trash, or even in the toilets. From next month, all pharmacists will have to put a small stamp on your prescription to encourage you.
If the practice has greatly developed in ten years, to affect a share of 78% of the population (162g per capita was upgraded in 2018), there is still progress to be made in the way of doing things. "There are still too many boxes and paper notices that should join their own sorting process," says for example Denis Millet, president of the union of pharmacists of Loire-Atlantique. Indeed, no need to leave the cardboard around the capsules and other tubes of cream which themselves undergo a specific treatment: once recovered, it is too complicated (and risky) to reuse them. They therefore join incineration plants in order to produce lighting and heat, and to avoid their burial and potential water pollution.
Avoid domestic accidents
But beyond the benefit for the environment, Cyclamed wants to continue to raise awareness about the proper use of drugs. Getting rid of expired pills is good, but the ideal would be to return everything after treatment is finished or has become unsuitable. "Recycling them avoids domestic accidents," illustrates Tamara Gosset, director of Cyclamed. By bringing the capsules lying around in the cupboard, you are less tempted to take one, or a child falls on it. And especially when it comes to antibiotics, the wrong use of which (stopping treatment too early, self-medication, etc.) can promote antimicrobial resistance, that is, the creation of new bacteria against which it is necessary to invent new treatments… A “major public health issue” which is responsible for 12,500 deaths per year.
According to Cyclamed, this message is however starting to be well received by the French. If unused drugs represented, in 2018, still almost a quarter of people's medicine cabinets, the volume recovered by pharmacists has been falling for several years. A figure that could lead to believe in bad practices, but which goes hand in hand with a significant drop in drug consumption in France (50 boxes sold per year and per capita in 2005, compared to 43 in 2018). "Behaviors are going in the right direction: the French respect their treatment better and have taken the reflex to bring back the rest," says Thierry Moreau-Defarges, president of Cyclamed. The number of lines on prescriptions has also decreased. "
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