[Pharmwaste] Ithaca NY results, a how-to video, & a request for resources

[Ed Gottlieb]

The Coalition for Safe Medication Disposal of Tompkins County held our
second collection event on October 16th.
401 vehicles dropped of 741 net pounds of medications in six hours.  To
let folks know how good these results are I've been comparing it to the
recent DEA collection in Rhode Island which had 13 collection sites and
brought in a total of 784 pounds.

We collected data on the gross weight of each vehicles contribution. 
Subtracting the total tray weight from what went into the Sheriff's
trailer we know we had a total of 37 pounds of trash and paper
recycling.  The trash was mostly plastic bags and the recycling was
mostly outer packaging we removed or boxes containing the medications.

We also asked five survey questions and got responses from 394
vehicles.
1. Did you come to our March collection event?  Yes 17.5%, No 82.5%
2. How did you hear about this event?  Newspaper ad/article 50.7%,
Newspaper sticker 21.8%, Radio 18.8%, ...
3. What would you have done with these medications if you hadn't heard
about this event?  Hold on to them 57.4%, toss in trash 30.7%, flush
10.5%, ...
4. Why did you want to get rid of these medications? (check all that
apply)  Expired 63.5%, stopped using or don't need 41.5%, protect
environment 9.8%, Safety 6.5%, Deceased 6.2%, ...
5. What city, town, or village do you live in? ...

To get the per vehicle weights, the full survey results, or some event
photos please email me with "Request results" in the subject line.  Be
sure to let me know which items you want sent.

A single mercury thermometer, one small bottle of Mercurochrome, and
one test kit containing mercury were screened out of the items turned
in.  A few sharps came in as well.  

Still working on our inventory totals.  For our next event we will not
be using ReturnCoInc's software.  It turned out to be slower than using
a spreadsheet.  We will also modify our focus to not only get full data
from every tenth vehicle but to count all controlled substances that are
collected.  

Park Productions out of Ithaca College produced a seven part YouTube
video based on our event titled, "How to Organize a Collection for
Household Pharmaceutical Wastes".  

In support of the video, I’m preparing reference documents and links
to include on the web.  If you have suggestions for resources to include
please send them on to me with the subject, "Resource suggestion."  I'm
still trying to get a local agency to host the resource page.  If I
don't have luck locally, would you be willing to host it?  If so, would
you want me to moderate what is put there or would you like to take that
on?  I've been told that I can add a URL reference to the YouTube
videos.  

And, thanks again to all who sent me visuals for use in a power point
presentation I did ahead of the event.

Ed Gottlieb
Industrial Pretreatment Coordinator
IAWWTF
525 3rd Street
Ithaca, NY  14850
(607) 273-8381
egottlieb at cityofithaca.org