Bring all your unwanted medication for disposal. Help protect the people we love and the environment we live in.

Household collection only!

Not intended for commercial disposal

What's in your medicine cabinet?

Help protect the people you love and the environment we live in by disposing of your unwanted medical waste properly. Old medications expire and are often forgotten. These drugs remain in medicine cabinets, drawers or on counter tops where anyone, including children, can take and subsequently ingest them.  Teens report that the most common place they get drugs is from home or family members.  Disposing of unwanted medications by flushing them down the toilet can cause them find their way into water bodies.  Drug residues have been found in surface water, such as rivers and lakes and in some cases, community drinking water supplies.

How do you properly dispose of your household medical waste? Here’s how… Join us at the Lowell Health Department, at 341 Pine Street, to dispose of all your unwanted (and expired) medications, your used sharps [syringes and lancets] and mercury oral/rectal thermometers on Thursday, October 15th from 8:00AM to 12:00PM. This is a household collection only and not intended for commercial disposal.   Please remove all identification from prescription bottles or better yet, place unused/expired medication in a secured zip lock baggie.  If you are bringing spent sharps, put them in a puncture and water proof laundry/ bleach bottle or sharps container. Be sure to write “Sharps… do not recycle”. For thermometers, be sure to protect against breakage and remember to ask for an exchange…we’ll give you a digital thermometer, at no cost!

If you can not make it to the Health Department on the 15th, then join us on Saturday, October 17th from 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM at the Solid Waste & Recycling Office’s semi-annual Household Hazardous Waste Day drop-off event, held at Cawley Stadium.  Enter the parking lot from Douglas Rd. This event is open to Lowell residents only.  If you are bringing only Meds, sharps or thermometers, be sure to enter the ‘express’ lane.

One more option for safe medical waste disposal, is combined with the Lowell Regional Wastewater Utility’s monthly used motor oil drop off.  Bring your medical sharps (and mercury thermometers) to the WWTP, at 451 First St Blvd, (Route 110) in Lowell, from 8 am until 12 noon; on the fourth Saturday of the month [Apr thru Nov] – this venue does not include a medication disposal option.

We would like to thank the following departments, for their cooperation, and funding, to make these events available to the public.  The Lowell Health Dept, the Solid Waste & Recycling Office (DPW), the Lowell Regional Wastewater Utility and the Lowell Police Dept.

For questions, contact the Public Health Office at 978-970-4010 ext. 4304.