Do you find it hard to let things go? A recent medication amnesty project in Norwich has seen decades-old medication be returned long after it’s used-by date. 

The Hoveton and Wroxham Medical Centre has been running a medication amnesty for the last month to highlight “the need of emptying your cupboards out, knowing how to get rid of medication, and where to dispose of it” as a part of an initiative to raise awareness about medicine wastage. 

“It’s quite interesting to see what people have actually held on to over the years,” says dispensary manager Charlotte Watlow.

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She had become more aware of the issue of medication waste through audits she undertakes in her role as part of a dispensing services quality scheme, and the idea was suggested in their bi-monthly patient participation group meetings. 

“Originally, we were going to only run it for two weeks, but we decided to get a proper audit and idea of what’s been returned,” Watlow said. 

Watlow has been at the medical centre for two and a half years, and her “main focus is around medication and prescribing because we have to make a profit to stay in business”.  

“So anything we can do to help with that and highlight [to other surgeries] that maybe they need to do something similar. 

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“But I definitely wasn’t expecting some temazepam from 1987, or little old bottles of wound powder and toothache tincture from a local pharmacy in Swaffham,” she added. 

Watlow believes the latter old bottles are from the 1980s or “even earlier [from] the 50s” and says they are so old there are no expiry dates or dates of manufacture on them. 

“It was obviously before official sort of guidelines came in.” 

Other older returned medication includes prepared fuller’s earth and boracic ointment from Boots, a Lloyd’s adrenaline cream and Evans dermal powder. 

To "open" our eyes to waste

Watlow says “not every pharmacy has a waste disposal licence” and patients from other surgeries have returned medication too. 

She has been totalling up the haul of medication and estimates the prescribed medication returned so far has a value of £20,000 – she is yet total the value of over-the-counter medication. 

After sorting out the returned medication, Watlow is putting the returned medication into an incinerator and the empty boxes are then being anonymised to go up on a display. 

“[It’s] to open people’s eyes at the amount of waste, and obviously to open our eyes as prescribers within the surgeries as well because it starts with us.” 

Watlow said the amnesty has brought “back some memories” for her and colleagues as they recall family members using the old medication. 

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“It’s definitely intriguing and fascinating to see how things were bottled up […] with no clear instructions on how to use it. 

“It’s quite nice to see something from that era and still be whole [and] have no damages or anything like that.” 

The initiative runs until tomorrow October 11.