Why Do Environmentalists Always Get It Wrong?

Today the Redondo Beach Police Department teamed up with Behavioral Health Services, Inc. a non-profit organization funded by the LA County Dept. of Public Health under the Substance Abuse Prevention and Control Division to hold a drug drop-off. 

Gather up all of the Rx drugs you are not using, put them in a bag and drop them off at a designated place.  Today it was 200 N. PCH at Vincent an other department of the RBPD. 

We already had a metal box (formerly held cookies)  full of stuff we were no longer taking so it was an easy matter to chuck them all into a plastic bag and twist tie it shut.  Handing the bag over to one of several people standing around under a little blue tent,  we then motored stately on our way.   Personnel seemed very concerned that we hadn't included any needles which, of course, we hadn't. 

We were given a brochure on Safe Disposal Methods Do's and Don'ts

DO
Take Rx drugs to events like this one today

Take them to a designated police station with drop-off boxes - locally that would be Redondo, Hermosa and Manhattan Beaches plus a Walgrens at 1344 W. Redondo Blvd, Gardena.

Take drugs back to the pharmacy and use their drop-off box.  I have never seen a drug return box in any pharmacy I have ever been in and that includes "ours," the CVS on Pier Avenue.  Our drop off is I march up to the Consultation booth, hand them over and say, "I can't take these - they (fill in symptom") and they take them back.  The first time I did this, I suggested that they give the pills to a poor person without insurance and they were still laughing as I wended my way to the store front door. 

Dump the pills in with a used box of cat litter or coffee grounds in a bag and seal the bag. Remove the label from the plastic pill box and toss them into regular trash. 

DON'T
Flush drugs down the toilet.  Here is where I start to lose it ... "This pollutes our ocean and drinking water."

This is so patently absurd that it makes me want to drop kick whoever said it straight off of a cliff.  Palos Verdes isn't that much of a ride ... it could be done ... let them pollute the ocean as they rot away in it. 

Whatever is in the toilet is flushed to a sewer line which leads to a treatment facility that has standing tanks that filter waste from liquid, and put the dried waste in landfills.  Pills dissolve.  They are not going to be found in a landfill. 

The liquid left from this process is then filtered, cleaned and re-filtered again before going into the ocean. 

Tell me how a Rx drug - or even an aspirin for that matter - is going to harm any living thing!  Answer:  it isn't because it can't. 

And yet environmentalists make a big song and dance about polluting our oceans!  To hear them you would think your toilet flushes directly into the ocean! 

Which brings me to this gentle suggestion:  whenever one of these idiots tells you something like that, nod, smile pleasantly and go look it up.  They really are full of shit.