South Yorkshire ICB (Sheffield place) and Sheffield Children’s Hospital (SCH) worked collaboratively on a campaign to encourage patients of all ages to return their inhalers for correct disposal. Inhalers are a major source of greenhouse gases. However, the impacts can be reduced through ensuring the correct product is prescribed and inhalers are disposed of correctly. The greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change come from propellants used in some inhalers. Even after an inhaler is finished it still contains these environmentally damaging gases. There is no national recycling scheme for inhalers, councils do not generally accept inhalers in domestic recycling and inhaler should not be disposed of in normal household waste. Currently the most environmentally friendly way to dispose of inhalers is to return them to a pharmacy for incineration which significantly degrades the harmful greenhouse gases they still contain.
We carried out a survey of 1200 people receiving inhalers across Sheffield and Doncaster, only 16% of respondents were currently returning their inhalers to a pharmacy. The remaining patients were putting used inhalers into domestic waste or domestic recycling. Only 36% of respondents knew that inhalers could not be put into domestic recycling. 84% of respondents did not know that returning their inhalers to community pharmacy was the most environmentally friendly way to dispose of their inhalers. Encouragingly 96% of respondents would be happy to return their used inhalers to a pharmacy. Sheffield Children’s Asthma service also conducted a survey of 50 families who visited them and discovered that 42% didn’t know that inhalers cannot currently be recycled via domestic recycling. Although 94% said they would be happy to return empty inhalers to a pharmacy.
Our aim was to try and ensure our patients returned their inhalers to either Sheffield Children’s Hospital or a local community pharmacy for correct disposal. This will reduce the carbon impact associated with incorrect disposal.
We engaged practices and pharmacies to support the campaign locally by using posters and social media to improve patient awareness about inhaler disposal. We produced a variety of support materials including posters, social media images and an animation for practice screens/social media and we also shared the campaign via ICB social media from September 2022. We also encouraged GP practices to share a one-off text message to all patients on inhalers.
New ‘animal bins’ have been installed at the hospital site. These are for patients to return used inhalers during regular check-ups rather than having to make a separate trip. As this is a children’s trust, they tried to make the bins fun as this will help to begin conversations and engage with the young people.
