Barb Sheehan is a member of the Rotary Club of Highton, District 9780 and is District 9780 Environmental chair.

Working with the Rotary Club of Geelong East, Barb was successful in receiving a grant from Geelong Council to run a trial of collection and recycling of medication blister packs. She has connected with PharmaCycle and placed collection boxes in 6 pharmacies around Geelong.

As a Pharmacist, she knows the quantity of blister packs supplied every day.

More than a billion medicinal blister packs are produced in Australia each year.

The packaging is unable to be recycled by kerbside collections, so it has historically ended up in landfill.

The program has been driven by the Rotary clubs of East Geelong and Highton, with the aim of seeing 500 kilograms worth of the blister packs diverted from waste and fully recycled.

Council was pleased to support the project via a $10,000 Environmental Sustainability grant.

 

It is such a simple process.  Collect your blister packs and then take them to a participating pharmacy and drop them into the recycling box. 

Pharmacycle will come and collect the recycling boxes when they are full and then manage the recycling of the contents. 

Thank you to the pharmacies listed below for agreeing to be part of this wonderful recycling project: