Breaking
FoodNerdy Recipes Management System
Tag

dispose

Browsing
Lifestyle

Don’t Dispose of Medicines and Medicines Down The Drain: Here’s How to do it Right

What to do with old pills and opened bottles of cough syrup? Just in the toilet and flush? Not a good idea: Medicines find their way into the wastewater and thus into the water cycle in many ways – with negative consequences for the environment.

Medicines in waste water: causes and problems

Drugs get into the wastewater in a number of ways. People take medicines and may excrete some of them in their faeces or urine. Medicines that are administered as a cream enter the sewage system when you shower and bathe. On the other hand, disposal via the toilet and sink is completely avoidable and also wrong, explains Philip Heldt, graduate human biologist and ecotoxicologist from the NRW consumer advice center. Not inconsiderable amounts of medical waste products also come from livestock farming. Especially in farms with conventional intensive animal husbandry, the animals receive medication that gets into the groundwater via excretions.

However, how difficult it is to filter the substances out of the wastewater varies widely. Many medicinal active ingredients are quickly and easily degradable. However, this is not the case with others because they cannot be defeated by bacteria. Bacterial degradation is the common process in water treatment. In some places, sewage treatment plants are therefore retrofitted with activated carbon filters or ozonation systems in order to also destroy substances that cannot be eliminated by bacterial degradation. “It’s successful, but it’s not happening across the board,” criticizes Philip Heldt.

The further course of the substances is problematic. Water that has passed through the treatment plant then flows into rivers and thus back into the natural water cycle. “This means that people and animals drink from it and thus absorb the substances,” explains expert Heldt.

Effects on people, wildlife and flora

In a period of 30 years, substances such as diclofenac cause environmental cleaning costs of up to 1.5 billion euros, according to a new study by Prof. Mark Oelmann from the Ruhr West University. In 2019, 40 watercourses in Austria were examined and the painkiller diclofenac was detected in all of them. In studies for certain fish species, harmful effects on the liver and kidneys could be demonstrated. In trout, for example, half a microgram of diclofenac per liter of water already leads to kidney damage.

But: People do not ingest any drug residues through their drinking water. “You can drink the water from the tap without hesitation,” assures the resource conservation expert Heldt. On the one hand, most substances in the sewage treatment plants are degraded to well below the limit values. On the other hand, the water works only take water from very pure sources for drinking water. “To ensure that this continues to be possible in the future, careful handling of the wastewater is important.” You should not waste water and, above all, give it back as clean as possible.

Because the sewage treatment plants do not manage to filter out all the substances from the wastewater. Careful, sustainable use of water therefore means not only saving on the quantity, but above all loading it with as few things as possible that do not belong in it. “The toilet is not a dump,” warns Astrid Hackenesch-Rump

Conclusion

You too can make a contribution by using medication correctly. The most important thing is not to throw medication down the toilet or sink. You can hand in medicines that have expired or are no longer needed in most pharmacies, and disposal with the residual waste is also possible in almost all cities. The medicines are then burned with the other residual waste in the waste incineration plant. Medicines should only be taken to the recycling center in municipalities with mechanical-biological waste treatment. You can find out more on the homepage of your local waste disposal company. “Last but not least, moderate meat consumption contributes to water protection. Buying meat from organic farms is also an alternative, since less medication is used,” says von Heldt.

Keep Reading
By
Lifestyle

Old Video Cassettes: How do You Properly Dispose of Them?

If you want to get rid of old VHS tapes, it’s important to know how to dispose of them properly. Alternatively, you can donate or sell the video cassettes.

What to do with the old VHS?

“Where to put the old VHS?” is a question that has certainly come to your mind if you have found old cassettes somewhere that you no longer want to keep. If you want to back up the contents of the VHS cassette, you should do this as a first step. You can either digitize the videos yourself using an intermediate device (called a video grabber) or you can find out about companies in your area that offer VHS digitization.

You can try to make some money with your old VHS tapes. For collectors, some of the old cassettes are real treasures. You could approach a sale through collector forums, online auction houses, or a flea market. How much your cassette is still worth has to be decided individually. If it’s a very rare film that isn’t available on DVD or Blu-ray, or one with a special sleeve, you can get more for it than if it’s an unknown film or a multi-rereleased classic . To get a rough idea of ​​the price, you can find out about common prices in advance, for example in collectors’ forums or on VHS markets. Alternatively, you could also donate your cassettes and make someone happy who cannot afford Blu-rays or DVDs, for example. Charity shops often gratefully accept donations of video cassettes. Just call your local fundraiser or nonprofit shop ahead of time and see if they would accept your tapes.

If selling or donating is not an option for you, you can of course dispose of the cassettes. You should definitely delete the video recordings on the cassette beforehand; so you can be sure that nobody can view your (perhaps private) content anymore. If you only have a small number of VHS cassettes, you can dispose of them in the general waste. If you have a larger collection, you should go to a recycling center.

Keep Reading
By
Cooking Tips

Wine Corks: Why You Should Still Not Dispose of It

Are you looking forward to an aromatic glass of wine, but then realize that it corks? Read here what you can do if the wine corks – and why you should still not dispose of it.

When wine begins to cork, you don’t see it visually at first. Because the cork changes neither its color nor its appearance. You can primarily tell from the smell that the wine is corked. It then gives off an odor that smells like damp cardboard or cardboard. This makes the wine appear less fresh. In technical jargon, this is also known as a “cork error”.

Tip: If you are unsure whether the wine really corks, you can easily check this by adding some carbonated water. This will enhance the smell and make it easier for you to tell if the wine is corked.

Why does wine cork?

Wine is corked by the breakdown product trichloroanisole (TCA), which reacts with certain substances in natural cork. However, you only notice the obvious smell when (invisible) mold has already formed on the cork and is producing the strong-smelling chemical. Nevertheless, according to current knowledge, corking wine is not harmful to health because the harmful substances are not available in sufficiently high quantities.

By the way: not only bottles with a cork, but also bottles with a screw cap are affected. In these cases, the TCA gets into the alcohol via barrels, hoses or cartons, for example. Ideal conditions for TCA to be released could also exist in wine cellars. Since the warm, humid cellar climate offers microorganisms an ideal breeding ground, they could react chemically and thus release the odorous anisole.

What else can you do with corked wine?

Before you pour the wine down the drain, you can try the following trick: Clean the neck of the bottle with a clean cloth and pour the wine into another container. Place a large piece of cling film in the wine. This attracts the TCA and reduces the cork taste. You can theoretically enjoy the wine again after 15 to 20 minutes, when the cork taste has reduced.

Alternatively, you could also try making vinegar from the leftovers of the wine. All you need is wine, water and naturally cloudy apple cider vinegar. Follow these steps to prepare the vinegar:

Take a larger glass jar, wash it out and let it dry well.
Pour the wine and water into the jar.
Add the apple cider vinegar to the wine and water mixture. Mix everything well with a wooden spoon.
Secure a piece of cloth over the jar with a rubber band to act as a “lid” and store in a warm place.
Now the acetic acid bacteria do the rest. They multiply and convert the alcohol so that after a few weeks you get acetic acid. During this time, you can let the vinegar “rest” and don’t have to stir it extra.
Tip: You have to decide for yourself whether you want to use the wine for cooking or not. In principle, it can still be used, but it can happen that the bland taste takes over the food and makes it inedible. However, if the cork smell isn’t too strong, you could still use the wine for cooking. Alternatively, you could also try to exchange the corked wine with the manufacturer. Smaller traders and winegrowers sometimes take back the fine wine as a gesture of goodwill.

Keep Reading
By