Hmm.

[ewt]

Left hip not great today. I think I did something to it in the bath. Le sigh.

All my medications and some of my vitamins/supplements come in blister packs. This is starting to really bug me. I know they are more convenient for carrying around in coat pockets and so on, and I am grateful for that, but I can't help feeling upset about the waste created by the blister packs. I wonder if I can grill them and make them turn pretty colours or something; because they are metal and plastic and stuff and thing I can't put them in the ordinary recycling.

I know this is just a small thing, but it's a small thing that affects many, many people.

May re-post this to several hippie communities if I don't get enough ideas here. No time now.

Comments

[duncanneko.livejournal.com]

I have the same twinges of guilt, though at least I can occasionally get ibuprofen in glass bottles which are marginally more practical.

Empty blister packs make very good mixing palettes for model painting, but it's a fairly niche use...

[vashti.livejournal.com]

I've heard that you can use blister packs for making doll's furniture, but that's also niche and I can't think of anything else you could use them for.

Could you ask the pharmacist to dispense them in bottles, rather than blister packs? Or scrub off the foil and put the plastic in the recycling? (although that sounds like something you might not be able to do)

[arosoff.livejournal.com]

Nope, meds in the UK come pre-packed in the blister packs and boxes and the pharmacist just takes the boxes off the shelf :/ Drives me nuts--in the US, the pharmacist has big bottles of tablets, and s/he uses a gadget to count out the pills and put them in little bottles (which can be re-used if you want to). More work for the pharmacist i guess but means they can give you any number. Nurofen, etc also come in bottles (no 12-tablet restriction) although cold tablets are limited and come in counted blister-packs because, er, you can use them to make crystal meth...

Vitamins, though--you can buy American Solgar ones, which come in bottles.

I've got several prescriptions and take multiple pills for some of them, and I get so annoyed with all the clutter from empty blister packs and cartons. it was so much easier when I had 3 or 4 bottles in my medicine cabinet!

[cabd.livejournal.com]

Some drugs here also come in bottles, but increasingly the trend is towards blister packs. The idea is that its much harder to accidentally overdose.

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

It's also a lot easier for me to remember to take the damn things.

I understand the reasoning behind blister packs, I just wish I had some way to mitigate the packaging waste - other than getting completely healthy and not needing to take any tablets evar, but that's a long way off.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

It's v. annoying, yes! But they are so light, that even with the aluminium, I still class them as 'small stuff - not for sweating' ...

[devvie.livejournal.com]

I knew they were annoying, but not this bad:

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=483983&category=OPINION&newsdate=5/20/2006

[qadira.livejournal.com]

whenever I think of stuff like that, my brain says "hmm, I wonder if that could become a windchime or mobile".

I have a small sack full of caps off beer/ale/etc bottles, and some day it will become something.

[crankles.livejournal.com]

Are they the kind that are just plain foil or are they covered with a paper coating, too? I wonder if you can recycle the plain foil backing.

[sci.livejournal.com]

I'm quite tempted to attempt construction of a Thermal Depolymerisation Unit for home use. Admitadly though, that'd just turn it into crude oil, minerals and other trace chemicals.