An article at Forbes.com states that a company called Capital Returns and others are collecting outdated and unused pharmaceuticals and burning them in some of the nation's waste-to-energy facilities. These collection programs help to prevent the un-used drugs from ending up in the environment (or stashed in drawers where little kids or people wanting to get high can get them).
This has been done for years, companies such as Covanta provide services for this kind of thing. Mainly corporations with sensitive information use it. Everything from sensitive documents and outdated food to narcotics and counterfeit products are hauled to a WTE facility and dumped into the charging hopper. From there it eventually makes its way into the furnace and the mass majority of it comes out of the stack as carbon dioxide and water. It is popular with the police to burn up all of the plants they collect from growing operations. To the dismay of the public, WTE combustion is so efficient that no psychoactive plume emanates from the stack.
It would be nice if the unused pills could be re-sold (or given) to other people who need them, but of course there are all kinds of health and safety issues that come along with that. So the burners are the next best place for them, as flushing them down the commode as is commonly done puts them into the hydrosphere where they can do harm and possibly bioaccumulate. Throwing them in the trash will send them to a landfill most of the time, which is not a terrible place but waste-to-energy is a much better option due to the fact that they will not be a legacy for the future.
Most of the collected pills are being disposed of at municipal waste-to-energy plants. They are trying to get clearance to combust them at a facility used for hazardous waste. I say stick with the municipal plants. They burn just as hot, are cheaper, and they recover energy. They are burning something that was designed for people to put into their body, I think that municipal combustion should be sufficient (see below).
One Plant is All you Need!Separate medical waste incinerators do not make sense. The volume of medical waste is so small compared to municipal waste, and as long as a proper program is put in place at waste-to-energy facilities for the handling of medical waste, there should be no need for separate medical waste units. Once it gets into the furnace at a waste-to-energy plant there is no need for additional energy input. The municipal waste produces all of the heat needed to burn the medical waste; dedicated medical waste units typically have gas-fired burners that provide the energy needed to burn stubborn infectious waste. That's energy going down the drain. There is also no need for separate flue gas cleaning systems, and any energy that is there gets recovered.
Don't burn stuff with toxic metals in it - that is dumb to do anytime. Everyone knows that incineration cannot destroy metals no matter how hot the fire or how sophisticated the APC system. Better yet, don't MAKE stuff with toxic metals in it! On a trip to the home improvement store today I was reminded that we still sell herbicides based on arsenic. At least DDT decomposes eventually!
Side Note: I found it interesting how the Spell Checker dictionary in Firefox recommended "com bust" when I typed the word "combust"
