If you are anything like me, your medicine cabinet is full of prescription drugs that are expired and will never be used. But how to dispose of them? Did you know that disposing of them improperly can lead to drug abuse, accidental overdose and water contamination?

So what do you do with them? You have two options.

1. You can remove them from their original container, orange prescription bottles are easily recognized and can be stolen from the trash or from land fills, and mix them with other garbage like coffee grounds and cat litter in a sealed container.

2. You can also take unwanted drugs to a pharmacy for safe disposal. Most, though not all, pharmacies will gladly dispose of them for you.

Whatever you do, don’t flush them down the toilet. That puts the medication into our water supply. The EPA is currently researching what prescription drugs are doing to our water supplies.