Empty medication bottles can be reusable treasures, as one savvy salad lover demonstrated with a great hack for carrying dressing on the go.
The scoop
Jessica Thomas McGhee (@loveheylola), an environmental artist and sustainability enthusiast, revealed her creative solution for packing salad dressings on her Instagram account.
"I need to bring salad dressing, but I don't have any containers to put salad dressing in…or do I?" she explained.
"If you're a person with a chronic illness like me and you also don't like to throw things away, you might have 10,000 prescription bottles that you don't know what to do with."
Enter the solution in one of those containers. As a Midwesterner, McGhee reveled in putting a hunk of ranch dressing into the bottles after a thorough rinse.
"One prescription bottle with a new life and full of ranch dressing," McGhee concluded humorously. "Hundreds more in my closet forever, for what reason I don't know…"
How it's helping
Repurposing old medication bottles has numerous benefits. This idea not only saves money by eliminating the need for special containers, but it also reduces plastic waste.
These durable, perfectly sized containers are excellent for holding runny condiments, making them ideal for work or picnics. That sure beats the alternative destinations for the empty medicine bottles.
They could end up in a crowded landfill, and later escape that by shedding microplastics into far-off places like the ocean.
McGhee revealed in the comments that that would likely be the fate of the bottles if she disposed of them, considering her local area doesn't accept them for recycling.
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What do you currently do with your old pill and vitamin containers? Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. |
Throw them away 🗑️ Even if you do live in an area that recycles them, most plastic recycling is far from perfect.
As for McGhee's other conundrum, plenty of other creators have found ways to repurpose empty medication bottles.
Another user shared: "I use them for travel lotion! They're awesome and the perfect size."
Other industrious people online have put forward other uses for the containers, including storing art supplies and assembling a fire-starter kit.
What everyone's saying
Jessica's innovative reuse hack received enthusiastic praise.
"I can't stand throwing those containers away," one user commented. "Thank you for another tip on reusing them."
"OK, that's just brilliant," another viewer gushed. "Mind blown."
A commenter wondered whether the problem could be solved another way, given the tendency for bottles to stack up for people with chronic illnesses.
"They should have reusable prescription bottles for meds we refill monthly," they suggested.
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