It has worried me for a while that I throw away medicine bottles. I use all I can in many ways. In order to avoid throwing them away, I put them down here and there and have them all over the place. Soooo, I began gathering them up and storing them in a plastic bag that my Hefty cups came in.
I have choices of what to do with the bag of pill bottles since I am absolutely using all the pill bottles I can.
Ways I can get rid of the whole stash instead of throwing the pill bottles in the trash to go to the landfill:
*put them in the recycling bin and see if they will take the pill bottles.
*donate them to someone who will use them for crafts.
*Put them in the box when I take things to sell at a junk store on the highway. I would not charge for them, just give them to her.
*Offer them to a veterinarian.
I looked online and found many examples of bedazzled pill bottles and lighting using pill bottles. But, I am not feeling it at all. In the link there are 13 steps. Step #13 is a list of links for more recycling of pill bottles.
Good ideas are sewing kits and first aid kits and a money stash. Until lately, all my pill bottles had tops that were very difficult to remove or they just fell off. One side was lockable and the other side was not. Since the new Walmart caps are so easy to get off, I am going to start carrying a pill bottle in the car with Q-tips in them. Before, the caps were easily popped off or impossible to get off when turned the other way. The last thing I want to do is to fight a bottle that holds something to make my life easier.
At one pharmacy I used for years, I would take my one prescription bottle in with me, The pharmacist would take the pill bottle, put more pills into it, slap on a new label, and give it back to me. That never happens now.
Exbf tosses his pill bottles in the trash, so now I have him saving them for me to recycle.
Do you reuse pill bottles? If so, what do you do with them? Do you put them in a recycling bin?
As I have no use for pill bottles, mainly because I cannot see thru them, I put them, minus the cap, in the recycle bin. Luckily, we have no more than 1 every couple of months.
ReplyDeleteIn reference to a previous post about newspapers - ours announced yesterday that there would be no classified ads on Mon & Tues starting April 30th. This would eliminate about 8-10 pages. It would just be classified not Legal Ads. What else will they be eliminating?
Sometimes, the new contents are hard to see inside these amber bottles!
DeleteThat's different. They will lose income by not publishing the ads.
I toss all our plastic containers, including pill bottles, in our recycling bin, which we take to the transfer station. If I didn't have this service, I am not sure I would worry about what I do with these bottles, and I would just toss them in the trash with wild abandon. I can't be worried about dozens and dozens of tiny bottles cluttering up my life. I am not one to hold on to stuff, even for the sake of the environment. Trash is trash, and it belongs with other trash. I do my part for the environment by creating less trash.
ReplyDeleteWell, I save gas by having a service right here at my door. I have one tiny bag that is not cluttering up my life at all. I actually don't see this as holding onto stuff any more than saving all the aluminum cans for weekly recycling.
DeleteI'm with Meg. It's not worth the clutter to me to worry about throwing them in the garbage. I do what I can to reduce waste, but not at the expense of my sanity ;)
ReplyDeleteAnything I decide to recycle is not cluttering my house since I have a bin right outside the door. If I save them to use or give away, those are in a tiny plastic bag on a shelf.
DeleteI most certainly reuse them. Sewing kits and first aid kits are my favorite, but also for buttons, beads and other sewing notions. But they also have a home in a box until I get around to using them. I guess I am lucky enough to still be alive and the pills have made this stash possible! Can't complain.
ReplyDeletetana50,
DeleteI love them for sewing notions. I have a button jar that is a pint canning jar. However, some buttons are kept in the pill boxes. I keep sewing feet in their own bottle. Beads live in pill bottles, too. Aren't we lucky to live with the help of meds in pill bottles?
Kudos to you for trying to Reuse items to help save the environment. We re-use our plastic pill bottles in several ways for camping. We have a very small RV fridge and it cannot hold regular store bought containers of all our food items. We use the pill bottles to bring mayo, mustard, ketchup, relish, sour cream, salad dressing, peanut butter, honey, and jams. If we run out, then we still have room for a store-bought size item.
ReplyDeleteWe also use the pill bottles for quarters and loonies for campground showers or laundry.
PW,
DeleteI love your name...lol. I try to do my part.
That is a great way to maximize the rv refrigerator and still have the food you want and need without full-size items.
Loonies? Sometimes, when I have too much change in my purse, I grab a pill bottle and put the change in there until I can spend it. I hate to be in line and scrounging for change just to get rid of it. The pill bottle makes it easier to use that $3 or $4 worth of change I am prone to accumulate.
Loonie is what Canadians call our $1 coin - the $2 coin is called a Toonie.
DeleteThanks
DeleteI used to use pill bottles to transport small amounts of spices back and forth to the condo at the beach and kept them packed in the condo bag to just pick up and go whenever we decided we needed some beach time.
ReplyDeleteI keep one in the freezer at the lake place. It was filled with water then frozen. Once it froze I put a nickel on top of the ice and replaced the top. The lake place is sort of remote and we have issues with the power going out. Now I can tell if the power was off for just a tiny bit or was off for a while. (So far the nickel has remained at the surface of the ice, but if I ever find it in the middle I know to toss everything that was in the freezer)
Anne,
DeleteI am sure that saves you time in your packing. Plus, you don't have to remember what to pack.
I have heard of this trick, but with a water bottle. Your use of a pill bottle certainly takes up less room. I had to take out the bottle in the freezer because I needed the room. Now, I can use one of these pill bottles in the freezer. Good idea.
Tut! Throw out all old bottles and pills not being used. WRite down the information rather.
ReplyDeleteurspo,
DeleteIs that you? I thought you would be for recycling instead of throwing things out! I like to recycle pill bottles like you like to recycle water bottles in the office! Write what information down?
Here's what I am storing in used pill bottles at the moment:
ReplyDeletecoins
buttons cut from old shirts
toothpicks
wooden matches
q-tips
seeds
Plus, I can return the used bottles to the pharmacy, have a bag full to go on my next trip.
I used to use film containers (remember those?) in earlier days.
kt,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the list. I need to pick up on some of those uses. I do remember film containers. Exbf has lots of those still. And, he uses them in front of me, and I am sooo envious.
Believe it or not I just SOLD a box of empty pill bottles on eBay. There were 81 bottles. They paid $35 plus an equal amount of shipping to JAPAN!
ReplyDelete