Appleton police collecting old medications

APPLETON - There's now a place in Appleton where you can safely throw away your old medications.

The Appleton Police Department opened a medication collection box Thursday to help cut down on pharmaceutical waste. The collection box will be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The box is in the lobby of the Appleton Police Department.

Police said they created the box because of concerns about the environmental risk of pharmaceutical waste. Officials cited national studies on the effects of medications seeping into drinking water supplies as cause for their concern.

Officials are also concerned about drug abuse. In the Fox Cities, police said more deaths are caused by pharmaceutical drugs than all other drug types, and they said the box may be a way to decrease accessibility.

"This project is a great way for consumers to get those pills out of their medicine cabinets in an environmentally friendly manner," Lake Winnebago Metropolitan Enforcement Group Unit Project Manager Brad Dunlap says.

Here's what to do before you drop off your medications: leave them in their original containers, cross out any personally identifiable information, like your name or phone number, but leave the name of the medicine on the bottle.

You can learn more at www.OCdrugdrop.org.