Innovative inhaler recycling service now available across the UK

Those of us with asthma or who have asthmatic family members will be familiar with this quandary: what to do with used inhalers? So great news today as GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has announced that it is expanding Complete the Cycle, a first of its kind respiratory inhaler recycling scheme, to community pharmacies across the country. The scheme, run in partnership with TerraCycle UK, was successfully trialled earlier this year in branches of The Co-operative Pharmacy.

Approximately 35 million GSK respiratory inhalers, including 25 million Ventolin packs, are used in the UK each year, generating around 450 tonnes of waste. Complete the Cycle is designed to enable every part of the GSK inhalers to be recycled. Based on the involvement of The Co-operative Pharmacy alone, the scheme could potentially save more than 69,000 respiratory inhalers from reaching landfill in just one year.

Nick Lowen, Commercial Operations Director at GSK commented: “As a company we want to champion and lead sustainability standards for the pharmaceutical industry. We are fully committed to finding innovative ways to increase our use of renewable materials and create less waste. Complete the Cycle shows that by working with our customers we really can do more to protect our environment.”

Complete the Cycle was piloted in 40 branches of the Co-operative Pharmacy across the south of Wales and the south east of England. In just six months, around 6,000 GSK respiratory inhalers, approximately 10% of those that would normally be used and disposed of, were returned to the participating stores, preventing the release of the inhaler propellant, which is a greenhouse gas, into the environment. The amount of propellant saved as a result of the pilot scheme is equivalent to preventing the release of approximately 35 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2). This is equivalent to the amount of CO2 that would be released by driving an average sized car around the world six times. The Co-operative Pharmacy is now expanding the scheme to 200 branches across the UK.

Fiona Caplan-Dean, Clinical Services Manager at The Co-operative Pharmacy, said: “The response seen during the pilot phase was extremely encouraging and we are pleased we can expand our involvement to a total of 200 Co-operative Pharmacies. We live and breathe our ethical strategy and are fully committed to responsible retailing; as such, we are delighted to be at the forefront of this exciting initiative, which is simple yet effective.”

Chris Baker, General Manager for TerraCycle UK said: “To date the public response to the initiative has been very promising. The general public is very familiar with the idea of recycling consumer goods such as plastics or glass, but this move into the medical devices arena represents a significant step. We are pleased inhaler users across the country will now be able to recycle their GSK respiratory inhalers.”

More information about the Complete the Cycle scheme including a list of all the participating pharmacies can be found HERE