Iowa is the first state in the country to come up with an everyday solution to an age-old problem -- what to do with no longer wanted prescription and over-the-counter medications.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources and the Iowa Pharmacy Association have partnered with Sharps Compliance Corp., of Houston, in a program called TakeAway Environmental Return System, making it as easy as a visit to your local pharmacy to get rid of the medicines and do the right thing environmentally. The drug collection and disposal is a three-year pilot program, developed in response to a 2009 mandate from the Iowa Legislature.

By Monday, 320 pharmacies in 97 of Iowa's 99 counties had already signed up to participate. Half are communities pharmacies, but the total includes all Hy-Vee and Pamida chain store pharmacies in Iowa. However, no national chains (Walgreen's and Wal-Mart, for example) have signed on, according to Kate Gainer, PharmD, vice president of professional affairs for the Iowa Pharmacy Association.

Tons of drugs go unused

Unlike one-day community take-back programs -- usually supervised by police as required by federal law if there's a chance narcotics, or "scheduled," drugs will be turned in -- TakeAway will be available year around at participating pharmacies.

Customers may bring in any amount of medication to dispose of as long as its in the container in which it was dispensed and follows a few other rules. For now, no scheduled drugs are accepted.

A grant provided three special 20-gallon tamper-resistant, lined disposal boxes to each pharmacy participating in TakeAway. When filled, the boxes are shipped UPS to Sharps' Texas facility where the contents are incinerated. After the first three are filled, pharmacies will pay $115 each for replacements, which includes shipping and disposal.

Sharps estimates as much as 200 million pounds of dispensed medications, or 40 percent of the 4 billion prescriptions written each year in the United States, go unused.

Dwayne Plender, an owner of Dutch Mill Pharmacy in two locations in Orange City, Iowa, and one in Remsen, Iowa, said prescription and over-the-counter medicines may be left over from an illness, not allowed to move with a patient into a nursing home, or just plain expired or ineffective. But they're still lurking in many people's medicine cabinets, posing a danger to young children, the elderly and pets, and perhaps a dangerous temptation to teens.

Most medications lose effectiveness after their expiration date and others can become toxic with age, Plender said. His pharmacy has previously mixed expired prescriptions medicines with used coffee grounds, rendering them unusable; others use kitty litter or some other unpalatable substance. But that doesn't keep the drugs out of the environment.

Don't flush, don't toss

Flushing them down the sink or toilet is bad for the environment and so is throwing them into the landfill.

"There are two basic ways pharmaceuticals enter the environment: excretion and the leachate" (liquid) pumped out of landfills and taken to the local wastewater treatment plant, said Tom Anderson. Anderson is the executive officer with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources who developed the contract with Sharps and oversees the initial, $165,000 IDNR grant for TakeAway.

"Most wastewater treatment plants aren't designed to remove pharmaceutical compounds," he said, "so it's getting discharged into our waterways. Research shows it leads to the feminization of male fish, sluggish behavior in aquatic animals. Some folks link it to deformities. The short- and long-term effects on humans ins not fully known yet. It could bring on early puberty."

Anderson said while livestock medications, also a major contributor to the problem, are not captured, incinerating what is collected totally removed them from the waterways and landfills.

Ruth Comer, a spokeswoman for Hy-Vee Corp., said the Iowa-based grocery chain has been involved in a number of one-day drug collection events, and has been asked frequently by customers for a year-around service such as TakeAway. She said the company will look at the drug disposal program after the grant runs out to decide whether to continue it on its own.

"It's beneficial to have a safe, secure way to dispose of them," she said.