By Ali · Updated July 2026
Expired painkillers at the back of the cupboard, a half finished course of antibiotics, a container of insulin needles: these are the household items people most often get wrong, usually by flushing them or dropping them straight in the bin. Australia has free, simple systems for both, and using them keeps medicines out of waterways and needles away from the people who handle our rubbish.
Flushing tablets or tipping liquid medicine down the sink sends active drugs straight into the water system, where treatment plants are not designed to remove them and they end up in rivers. Putting them in the kerbside bin is not much better, because medicines in landfill can leach out, and a blister pack or bottle left where a child, a pet or anyone else can reach it is a poisoning risk.
The safe answer is a national scheme built for exactly this, and it costs nothing to use.
The Return Unwanted Medicines project, usually shortened to RUM, lets you hand any unwanted or expired medicine to any community pharmacy in Australia for free. You do not need to have bought it there, you do not need to explain yourself, and there is no charge. Pharmacies store returns in dedicated bins that are collected and incinerated safely at high temperature.
What it covers is broad:
Sharps are anything that can pierce skin: insulin needles, syringes, lancets, auto injectors like EpiPens, and the pen needles used for a range of conditions. A loose needle in a kerbside bin is a genuine hazard, because waste and recycling workers sort material by hand and a needlestick injury carries a real infection risk. Sharps never go in any bin loose, and never in recycling.
The rule everywhere is the same. Sharps go in an approved sharps container, which is a rigid, puncture proof, yellow container with a sealable lid:
A sealed sharps container does not go in the kerbside bin either. The exact drop off varies a little by state and council, but the common options are consistent across the country:
Once the medicine itself is dealt with, the packaging is easier. Empty cardboard boxes and the paper information leaflet go in the yellow recycling bin as normal, and an empty plastic medicine bottle can usually be recycled too once it is rinsed, though its small size means some sorting facilities miss it.
The awkward one is the foil and plastic blister pack:
No. The Return Unwanted Medicines scheme is free and nationally funded. Any community pharmacy will take unwanted or expired medicines with no charge and no questions, whether or not you bought them there.
It is far better returned. Even everyday painkillers are a poisoning risk to children and pets in an accessible bin, and returning them to a pharmacy is free and takes a moment. The pharmacy is the right answer for any medicine.
Most pharmacies, diabetes organisations and needle and syringe programs supply approved sharps containers free or at low cost. Ask at a pharmacy counter, and they will also tell you where to return the full container.
Treat it as a sharp. It goes in a sharps container rather than a bin, because it contains a needle. Pharmacies and sharps programs take them, and an expired auto injector should be replaced rather than relied on.