Outrage Over Amber Bottles

As a almost middle-aged American with a sedentary job from a  somewhat shabby gene pool, I am medicated for a variety of ailments.  Every month I reorder my medications and receive the majority in amber or orange colored bottles.  Every month, three more amber bottles.  Add to that my husband's prescriptions and we add another three amber bottles.  Month after month, year after year we collect these bottles as they are not recyclable.  I have put these to use holding beads and pins, nails and nuts, but still the bottles add up.  

I have asked my local pharmacy if they have a recycling plan for these bottles but they do not.  They will take one or two at a time at a time if you bring them in when you are reordering your prescription, but that is all.  And as they are constantly encouraging their clients to order in advance or have these medications mailed, they are making even more medication bottles non-recyclable.

Now one day it suddenly occurred to me that if I and my husband had six bottles a month, twelve months a year, what must the aging and ailing baby boomers rack up a month?  A year?  How many amber bottles go into the landfill a day, a week, a year?  Something should be done.

I propose that everyone who reads this should contact their local pharmacy and find out their policy regarding the bottles made of non-recyclable plastic.  Will they take them back, even if they don't accompany a reordered prescription.  Will they take them back and recycle them when they do accompany a prescription?  I suspect that for many the answer is no.  

Search the internet and find out who will take these bottles and recycle them.  Call the manufacturers and ask them to revise their packaging procedures.  Use pharmacies that have recycling plans in place.  Talk to your friends and neighbors and encourage them to do so as well.  These plastics could be a valuable resource to someone making recycled plastic products.  Keep them out of the landfill and try to find someway to get them back into the system.  Why should we get healthy at the cost to our environment?