Hi there I am Christel from Diabetes Strong
and today we're going to talk about how to dispose of needles and other sharps
such as lancets and syringes so I'm going to show you three ways of
easily and safely disposing of sharps whether you're on
the go or at home
if you've been diagnosed with diabetes or any condition that requires you to do
injections or draw blood on a regular basis you
probably notice that you're now dealing with a lot of sterile equipment
and thereby a lot of trash including sharps
so sharps is a medical term for anything that can cut or puncture your
skin so that includes your needles it includes your syringes
includes your infusion sets lancets it includes auto-injectors anything
that has something that can puncture skin
so once you're done with it what do you do with it the first thought might be to
throw it in the trash don't do that first of all it's not
allowed everywhere in the world some states
especially in the US do not allow sharps in the trash second
it's a safety hazard for humans as well as animals that go through
trash so let me walk you through how to safely and appropriately dispose
of sharps it's recommended that you store your
sharps in sharps containers and dispose of them thereafter
so let me show you three different versions
the first version is the BD Needle Clipper
so this is probably my favorite I bring this along with me whenever I travel
this little guy can store 1500 clipped needles and it works from
everything from a 28 to a 31 gauge needle so it's seven dollars
on Amazon, it's fairly affordable I'll leave a link down below so you know
where to get it let me show you how it works
you simply click on the sides here and it pops up there we go this is a
little spring okay pops up and there's a little hole
here where you stick in your needle let's take out a needle so this is
a syringe see there's a big needle here there's our needle so I simply
stick it in and I just press
the needle the sharp is now stored in this container
that's how that works
another option is to go to your local pharmacy or Amazon and get a
sharps container so this one I'll leave a link down below to this one
as well it was seven dollars on Amazon and it's hard plastic and you simply
once you're done with your sharps you just put it in the container this
container is fairly full now there we go and you set it aside until
you're ready to dispose of it even comes with a lid
my third option for sharps container is completely homemade
so here we go so this is simply an empty bleach bottle that I just washed
out and I dried and this can also work as a sharps
container any container you have at home that's a
hard plastic can be used so something like a
detergent empty detergent bottle something like that usually water
bottles won't really work because they're often made of more
flimsy like thin plastic and imagine putting a sharp into there it'll just
penetrate through the plastic so that won't work but this
does I just wrote on sharps and we're good to go same
concept once you're done with your sharps you simply
plop that in there put on the lid and set it aside until it's full don't
fill it completely
but what do you do now
now you have a full sharps container what's next
some places will allow you to just throw your sharps containers directly into the
trash as long as it's firmly sealed however never throw it in the recycling
bin sharps cannot be recycled as I said some places but the rules
really differ depending where you're at so I live in California in the US
and in California, you're not allowed to throw sharps directly in the trash
same goes for Massachusetts and some parts of Washington
and some other areas as well so it's really important that you know your
local rules so this might sound something like
something that's a complicated but the good thing is as a service and
it's free it's called safeneedledisposal.org I'll leave the
link down below and you can simply go there if you're in
the US type in your zip code and it'll let you know where nearby that
you can drop off your sharps fairly easy I did that and it came up with
seven locations nearby where I can go drop off my sharps and
there's even a service where they'll come to my house and pick it up for me
so that's how we do that that's how we dispose of needles and other sharps
thank you so much for watching