Of Oxycodone and Compost

Waste not, want not.

A simple saying, but one that has led to the existence of, among other things, my very own compost heap (my frothy pile of joy!). Now, by the simple and naturally-occurring process of decay, I can return to the soil the abundance of nutrients and products I have enjoyed. My contributed nitrogen and carbon sources so far have taken the form of pits from juicy summer peaches and rich avocados, napkins that have cushioned many tea bags and wiped thirsty mouths, and some less savory things, like vacuum dust-bin whirls, shredded secret documents, wine turned to vinegar among other expired fridge remnants, and yard waste. This time of year, that means leaves.

By the way - I got my 3ft tall/3ft diam bin for free, and the compost it generates (after some 6+ weeks) works to fertilize and enrich the soil better than pricey chemical fertilizers. Just thought I'd put that out there.

Most recently, I got to wondering what really is the most environmentally appropriate way to dispose of something that most houses have an abundance of -- used pharmaceuticals. You can't fall off your bike without getting prescribed a passel of pills, and who's to say you'll need (or want) to take them all?

So, as with most curiosities, I asked the intarwebs if I could possibly compost my leftover happy pills. Note however, that this isn't just some hair-brained idea; while plowing through Compost This Book!, I was struck by the clever solution to an explosive situation in which the government inadvertently created a huge underground reservoir of TNT as a result of a munitions recycling program. Composting the enriched land with a carefully-designed recipe helped avoid explosions, and the resulting small organics were probably pretty nice for nearby plants, too. Those clean-up methods logically extend to pharmaceuticals. Most active ingredients have natural sources (remember the campaigns for saving the rain forests and their 'miracle cures'?), so the majority of them might be suited to decomposition the way that mother earth elegantly intended.
[Other medicinal additives (eg. binding agents, etc.) are likely biodegradable in some capacity; most are already water-soluble, depending on pH - you didn't think Pharma cleans their tanks with canola oil, did you?]

What I found was a surprising lack of instruction or publicly-available information about what to do with all those leftover synthetic substances lying around. That's dangerous - Big Pharma pumps out billions of pills per year, and much of it ends up in our environment through excretion and ways that water and biosolids are reused at industrial water sanitation facilities [see tox research @ USGS]. I did, however, find a nice Swedish course on environmental awareness with some cautionary words..

Excess prescription drugs also provide easy access for recreational abusers, because there isn't an easy, obvious way for Joe Consumer to clean out the medicine cabinet. E.g.: Conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh's pain medication abuse has been in the news recently. Most government websites DO advise people to stop throwing most of their pills into the wastewater stream via toilets or sinks, but the only alternative suggested is the trash. Well, that's just not good enough - landfills are full, and concoctions of some vile stuff leach out anyway. We can't very well convert all the land left into landfills to put our stuff in; this country needs all the green space we can get to absorb CO2, and farming is already lagging behind in producing enough food for the millions (import/export imbalance --> national debt).

The EPA's plan for the next few years doesn't seem nearly as ambitious enough to me; action needs to be taken now. It IS encouraging, though, that they're showing an active interest in the behavioral factors contributing toward decision making that is envronmentally destructive. I believe their findings may come into conflict with industry, but what results from any such conflict remains to be seen.


Listening to CSPAN radio last night wasn't particularly encouraging for my own faith in the government's ability to make decisions for its citizens on a basis that is independent of market-driven factors. The Nuclear Research Commission badly wants a burgeoning "nuclear renaissance," and no mentions were even made of international political damage done by nuclear proliferation. But, alas.. that topic rests for another day.