Prescription pill bottles—you know the ones, made out of see-through orange plastic with a white plastic locking cap—are ubiquitous. But they’re also ubiquitous in landfills, because they’re notoriously hard to recycle. Now, a team of designers has created a free alternative that can go into your compost bin when your prescription runs out.
Those orange medication bottles you’re familiar with are generally made out of plastic—polypropylene or #5 plastic, specifically. While technically recyclable, it’s actually very rare that it gets recycled. The sorters that recycling centers use to pick up recyclable objects, such as water bottles, often miss prescription bottles due to their small size. And #5 plastics aren’t accepted by all curbside recycling programs. Take Madison County, New York, which simply says upfront that the prescription pill bottles you get at the pharmacy “are trash.” With 4.55 billion retail prescriptions filled in the U.S. in 2020, that’s a lot of pill bottles ending up in landfills.
This paper alternative is designed to have a short life cycle. In fact, you can put it in the compost when you’re done with it and it will decompose, says Scott Carlton, creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness. That’s because it’s designed with paper, adhesives, and a water-resistant coating that are all biodegradable. (Finding a coating that would be water-resistant in the bathroom was the biggest challenge, according to Carlton. This one uses beeswax.) The design also complies with FDA regulations for child resistance. The run of 1,000 paper bottles that they initially hand-assembled ended up costing $4.50 per bottle, versus $0.35 each for the plastic version—which, of course, doesn’t include the environmental costs. Carlton says costs could come down to around $1.25 by automating the die-cut, folding, and adhesive process, and by increasing quantity.
