My previous report was about treatment for medical wastes and the Waste Control Act. Now, I would like to share with you how to dispose medical wastes that come from our family. Honestly my family used to dispose the medical wastes such as unused drugs in the waste box in the house. As a result, general garbage coming out of our everyday lives and medical wastes will be mixed together and some medical component will go to the general waste disposal site and eventually may go to soil, river or ocean, which results in unexpected consequence. Some of medical components may be antibiotics, antihistaminic, ointment or liquid cold medicine, etc. In fact, we have no idea what side effect will exist when such household medicine will be absorbed in soil, river and ocean but it could affect animals and plants in an unknown way and also affect us by drinking water. It will definitely disturb ecosystem.

The first step to handle the medical wastes is to sort out medicines into the same type. For example powder, pills and liquid. Then remove containers from medicine because most of the containers are plastic which should be separately treated as recycling. Lastly, bring those unused medical wastes to your neighbor drug store, where you can find a container for medical wastes. This may sounds like a small thing to do, but this will be the big step for us to be able to protect our environment.