Posted on 11/10/2010 6:26:50 PM PST by RangerM
If the labels don’t peel off easily, use a large black magic marker, cover all the information you want to hide and chuck it in with the plastic recycling. When it gets dumped at the recycling center, the bottle and labels are processed and the information is essentially destroyed.
Don’t throw them in the trash without destroying the labels. All a theif has to do is get your address and name, you’re toast.
I use them for fishing gear...sinkers, hooks etc.
they make great containers for small things (buttons, beads, paperclips).
But if you throw them out, be sure to take off the lables.
In the past, you took them back to the Pharmacy to fill, but now they throw them out and use a new bottle...which is cleaner and cheaper than pay someone to clean it out remove the label and refill it.
I really enjoy reading all the inventive ways to remove the information on the medicine bottles. I do the environmentally safe method. Set the bottle on a cinderblock and blast it with the shotgun that I lost when the ferry turned over last year in the deep lake north of my house.
I’ve never seen anything on a prescripton bottle that I wouldn’t give to anyone.
I strike a match, and hold the bottle over it and let it burn in the places where my name and address is. Then I throw it in the trash.
LOL! (Would a stool sample work as well?)
I know of one pharmacist who tossed her prescription vial in the trash and was surprised when someone phoned in requesting a refill of her (the pharmacists) prescription.
Many labels are now laser printed and it is a simple task to obliterate your information with a black permanent marker. If you are getting your prescriptions from a mail-order service such as VA or Caremark the labels are probably thermal printed. Just applying a little heat from a hair dryer or a lightbulb will generally turn these labels jet black and unreadable.
If you have leftover medication, the current recommendation is to mix the left over capsules or tablets with used coffee grounds or cat litter and place in the trash. Many states have instituted programs whereby old medications can be returned to a disposal box in your pharmacy. The boxes are then collected for destruction by a state approved agency. We no longer recommend flushing unused medications to minimize the impact on the water supply.
As a pharmacist with over 30 years experience I urge you to never underestimate the devious nature of people seeking drugs to abuse.
If possible I peel the labels off, or soak them to get them off. Then, I burn them. Wash the bottles out good, and use them in the workshop to keep small screws in.
LMAO !
What are the odds......;o)
Great minds think alike :)
“...worse are the folks hit with “medical identity theft” where someone charges their care to you!”
A couple of years ago I got a doctor’s bill for services provided to my daughter in Virginia on a given date. Was I stunned! On that very same day she had had surgery in a hospital in Japan. Someone was bamboozling the VA docs. How they got her information I’ll never know, but it’s frightening what goes on these days.
Great. I’m collecting an impressive variety of narcotics at my house, and I’m wondering what the heck to do with them. Drug addicts really won’t take them after they’ve been buried in used cat litter?
As for the label—you can try bleaching it, soaking it in isopropyl or ethyl alcohol, or spraying hairspray on it. Various inks are removed by different solvents.
LOL.....pic at bottom of my home page for ya....
Stay safe....
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