Pharmaceutical waste management is surrounded by an intriguing complexity, starting with the important challenge of leaving waterways clean for our descendants and ending with the multifaceted conflicting regulation. Pharmacies must take care of all these conflicts so as to stay away from significant fees and stick to compliant practices. That is why, in the last years, these institutions have been increasingly more committed to applying waste management regulations.

Increasing resources are the best signs that reflect this dedication. Thus, pharmacies have enhanced the staff training, the budget allocation, and the equipment purchases that improve disposal methods. There are numerous companies that have tracked these trends through various surveys. The results were published on their sites and they are public. Other aspects that were monitored were waste practices within the national hospitals.

Recently, a new survey has revealed the fact that the hospitals’ waste practices are compliant. Still, there are few medical institutions that manage these RCRA-hazardous products in a proper way. Despite this fact, trends are positive and more and more facilities have declared that they’re going to adopt these rules. Even though times were difficult because of the numerous financial challenges, pharmacies have tried to abide by the waste management regulations. Thus, in the following years, the experts are expecting even more facilities to use these compliant

practices.

Dual waste requirements are quite challenging. Thus, there are situations when a product is controlled and hazardous at the same time. In this case, the pharmacy doesn’t know exactly how to manage this kind of waste. Numerous pharmacy directors mentioned that their only solution was to throw these items down the drain. This way, they would make the controlled product unrecoverable and they would stick to the DEA requirements. This position is quite inaccurate because the DEA says that sewering the substance does not really mean making it unrecoverable. Actually, some states such as Washington, California, and Florida, are against dumping this type of waste in the sewer system. Moreover, numerous health systems were fined by the EPA for throwing the hazardous pharmaceuticals through the drain.

Thus, it seems that the only viable solution to this problem is to not generate waste. In order to achieve this goal, the ordering practices must be reviewed. As a result, waste generation will be considerably reduced. For instance, pharmacies could change their priorities to the better. These facilities could order only morphine sulfate vials of the size that is most commonly demanded. In this case, the initial product price must not be a priority. The first alternative will reduce the resultant waste and will increase the budget. If the purchasing decision includes the waste cost, the just-in-time inventory and the decision to buy smaller vials will be apparent.

Pharmacies are strongly convinced that it’s extremely hazardous to manage dual wastes. More and more facilities are choosing to use RCR- hazardous containers for disposing substances like chloral hydrate waste. The morphine sulfate waste disposal is not currently that widespread, but in the future the trend will become much more popular.