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Inhaler Recycling and Return

Estimated timings:
1-2 weeks to set up & run the project (steps 1-4)
2-3 months if including re-audit (step 5)

Can be done by a Pharmacist, Pharmacy technician, GP, Trainee or Student

Green Impact for Health Toolkit area: Prescribing & Quality Improvement

CQC Areas

  • Well-led (Environmental Sustainability)

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The benefits of this project

Project benefits for Your Patients

Benefits for Your Patients

  • Enhanced patient education and self-management.
Project benefits for Your Practice

Benefits for Your Practice

  • Engage patients and staff in green initiatives
Project benefits for The Planet

Benefits for The Planet

  • Reduces the environmental impact associated with the release of hydroflourocarbons from pressurised metered dose inhalers sent to landfills.

Opportunity for improvement

  • Important: This is a quality improvement resource only and not clinical guidance. Users must follow local and national guidelines and review  disclaimers and carbon footprint methodology before starting. Clinical responsibility lies with the user.
  • Inhalers should not be placed in household waste, as they cannot be recycled by household waste systems. Pressurised metered dose inhalers that are disposed in household waste may end up in landfill where the propellant gases, which are powerful greenhouse gases, will leach into the atmosphere contributing to climate change.
  • Used or unwanted inhalers should be returned to the pharmacy. Here they will be recycled or incinerated. Incineration degrades the powerful greenhouse gases, making them less harmful.
  • This project outlines how to put these recommendations into practice. 
  • You might like to make SMART goals for this project, e.g. Send a text message to all patients prescribed inhalers on safe inhaler disposal and get inhaler recycling posters displayed in the GP waiting room and local pharmacies within the next 1-2 weeks.

How to carry out this project

  1. Search for all patients prescribed inhalers

    We have collaborated with Primary Care IT who have created bespoke searches for all our asthma toolkit projects for SystmOne and EMIS users.

    For practices using SystmOne, request here: SystmOne free resources – Primary Care IT

    For practice using EMIS, request here: EMIS free resources – Primary Care IT

    Check your junk folder if you can’t see the email from PCIT in your inbox. See here for how to upload the searches.

    The search for this project is in the Disposal folder and is called GIP-160) Inhaler issues in last 12 months.

  2. Send information to patients

    Send information to patients to return inhalers to pharmacy for recycling or disposal via text message

    You can send patients an information leaflet on returning inhalers to the pharmacy for safe disposal.

    PrescQIPP have patient information leaflets, printed labels and banners you can add to websites about this (under patient information materials heading).

     

    Resource: Inhaler disposal

    Did you know your inhaler should be disposed of safely by your pharmacy, not put in the bin at home? Return your inhaler to the pharmacy – this protects the environment. For more info on how you should dispose of your used or unwanted inhalers, see https://www.recyclenow.com/recycle-an-item/inhalers

  3. Update prescription templates

    You could also update prescription templates to give recycling or disposal advice.

    Create prescription templates for the common inhalers used locally based on your formulary. In the patient information section of the prescription template include a not advising patients to return all used or unwanted inhalers to their local pharmacy.

    Resource: PCIT guide on editing prescription template in System One

    View

  4. Partners

    Partner with local pharmacies to ensure you are all giving out the same message to patients and ask them to put up posters in their waiting areas.  You might like to ask them to keep track of the number of inhalers returned e.g. via an inhaler collection box.

    You might like to partner with a recycling scheme if available.

    Currently we are not aware of any national inhaler recycling scheme. A previous GSK complete the cycle scheme and the TEVA terracyle scheme for inhalers have both sadly ended.

    There is a newly launched inhaler recycling project in South East London funded by NHS England, for more information on this please click here and there is currently a recycling scheme being piloted in Leicestershire.

  5. Study

    Think about how to measure the impact of this project and review in 1-2 months.

    • You could give pharmacies a container to collect returned inhalers and audit this every 2-4 weeks.
    • You could conduct a patient survey to look at how people dispose of their inhalers before and after the text message was sent.

Top tip

Use the patient videos and leaflets available to inform patients using inhalers. You may also wish to display these in your waiting room and at your local pharmacies.

How to scale this project up or down

Please note - Use of this project requires NetworkPLUS membership. If you would like to share this project with others, please invite them to purchase their own membership—access must not be shared with non-members.

You could take it to your Primary Care Network or Cluster to implement across all practices in your area. 

Have you completed this QIP

Tell us a little about your project in order to generate a certificate showing the probable benefits. This project may help with CQC evidence submission (see disclaimers).

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