Help, My Life, Tips & Tricks

Empty Pill Bottles Desperately Needed (Take your meds & help others!)

Ginger Ail

Pill bottles: those translucent orange soldiers that pile up all around us… in our drawers, cabinets, shelves… sometimes I wonder, if I had saved every empty pill bottle since I got sick could I build a small house by now?
Mountains of Pill Bottles
One thing I have always hated the most about being sick, is how you often need more help than you can give back. I’d see those specials on TV and think: I want to build a Habitat for Humanity house or dig wells in Africa with Oprah! (this might be an insomnia induced thought, but the general sentiment still stands).

Okay, so I can’t dig a hole in the blazing African sun. There are still a lot of ways to help others. Like this, this is a project with an idea so simple, it’s brilliant. I’ve tried this myself so I can vouch for how easy it is to do and how good it feels to pass on something that is trash to you, but will be a treasure to others…

Imagine you’ve walked miles to a remote village hospital to receive any form of medical care you can find.  You are given the medication you desperately needed and now you have to start the journey back home (often many miles).  You don’t shake the pill bottle maraca as you walk because there is no pill bottle, (there was barely medicine).  The pills bought in impoverished areas are often bought in huge quantities, in large jars, and doled out (if you’re lucky) wrapped in a tiny scrap of newspaper.

It doesn’t sound like a big deal at first. But the more I thought about it the more I realized: beyond the thought of just getting the medication home, what keeps the meds from swelling up from moisture by day 5? What keeps kids from getting into them? Or their getting lost? Those orange bottles that seem to accumulate so easily for us, can actually do more than you think for others…

How to Help:

Step 1:
When you finish your meds, save the bottle!  This includes bottles you might receive over the counter like for Advil, Motrin, vitamin bottles, supplements – as long as the bottles aren’t too (Large bottles just cost too much to ship).

Step 2:
Follow the instructions for preparing the bottles

Step 3:
Throw the bottles in a box or manila envelope, when you have enough of them, mail it off!

The bottles are not wasted in anyway. Once the meds are finished, the families often use the bottles in 100 other ways (just think of how helpful it could be to have a container with a lid that seals). And if the bottle you send isn’t able to be used, it will be recycled.

The New Organization is called:
Matthew 25: Ministries
11060 Kenwood Road
Cincinnati, OH 45242

Note: I have nothing to do with this organization. They state they are an international humanitarian aid and disaster relief organization helping the poorest of the poor, locally, regionally, nationally and internationally regardless of race, creed or political persuasion across the US and worldwide. They were cited on many sites throughout my research.

Help Animals! You can also try contacting your local animal shelter, vet or animal organization, a lot of them are happy to receive donated pill bottles!

681 thoughts on “Empty Pill Bottles Desperately Needed (Take your meds & help others!)”

  1. Pingback: Amy is an angel from Heaven, tune in to Episode 7… | therealtruthwithamyandemily

  2. Great idea! I’ve worked in medical contexts in developing countries and remember that scrap of paper that held pills. This is a campaign that could be extended globally, don’t you think?

    Leita

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    1. Okay Please tell me how the orange pill bottles,round, hard plastic,possibly can fit and be mailed in a flat envelope? What am I missing.??? Would gladly do this .

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      1. Get one of those padded bubble envelopes. About 4-6 fit inside a book sized one or buy a bigger one and mail a bunch at a time. Walmart sells many sizes.

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    2. Unfortunately, Project Malawi JUST ended this project! Now I have a box of empty pill bottles that I don’t really want to throw away, but have no idea what to do with!

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      1. On the website, it sounds like they will be announcing new programs soon. Maybe they will want pill bottles again. If you don’t want to keep the bottles around till then, you could always just recycle them.

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      2. From the Facebook page, it looks like you can mail what you have in January but not collect any more:
        PERHAPS A BIT OF CONFUSION
        We have just hit a record for the number of boxes and packages arriving with pill bottles for Malawi during the past three days. This in spite of the request that nothing be shipped from Thanksgiving to Christmas. It appears we did not explain this very well. Please do not send your remaining pill containers until January, and please conclude any collections you have in play. We are well over 1 million containers.
        Please convey this information to any group or individual that you know that has been collecting. It seems a large number of people are continuing to collect and send them who have not seen any of the notices since before Thanksgiving to end the collections.

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        1. It seems like the small (3×3) zip lock type plastic bags would be more practical for shipping as well as ease of handleing for the patient.

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      3. Recycle them. I was saving them to hold garden seeds but don’t need as many as I have accumulated. I am looking around my house at the accumulations of things, like empty medicine bottles or out of date meds, magazines, books I have read, and various collectibles like boxes of Christmas ornaments I no longer use and decided to get rid of stuff. Fortunately for me between home and work there is a county recycling center.

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            1. Matthew 25 Ministries 11060 Kenwood Rad, Cincinnati, OH, 45242. They want them to be very clean and labels removed.

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            1. Mary, check with local rescues or animal shelters to see if they could use the empty bottles. They give out medicine and need empty bottles. Just a thought.

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      4. get a hold of your local scouts to see if they could use them. there are a ton of different things that they can do with them and some of them even help them earn badges.

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      1. Yes, they are almost pleading with us to STOP sending them as they are receiving thousands and only one person processes them so they are overwhelmed. ODDLY, it sounded like they just want to stop them until the new year??? It was a little confusing–I will continue to recycle here rather than trying to send them to the Malawi Project.

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    1. The program ended, but you should not ever use test strip containers for pills or any other edible products. They contain chemicals that can make you sick.

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  10. Several years ago I read about someone in California building a small house using soda bottles. Why couldn’t the pill bottles be used to build a dog house or bird houses? The snap on caps could be used for the roof. Of course something suitable would be needed for a base. This could be a different craft project for elementary age kids and beyond. The bottles would still need to be washed and labels removed. Just a thought.

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    1. I just have a question, Are the bottles still needed?? Or will they always be a need for them?? I always have several a month and would be able to send them and also vitamin bottles. Please respond to let me know!! Thank you!!

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  12. Anyone can build a Habitat for Humanity home, there are local affiliates all around the world. As someone who works for the organization I find it dismissive that you state that building a Habitat home will “not happen in my lifetime”, have you tried reaching out to your local affiliate? We are always looking for volunteers to help us further our mission.

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    1. I don’t think she meant it to be dismissive. My take (as someone with a lifelong illness) is that she doubts she will be well enough to participate in such a worthy goal, yet as someone with a debilitating illness, this was (until the program closed) an attainable goal.

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    1. It is January 21, 2016, and have discovered the Malawi project is no longer taking bottles. They got over a million bottles and are well set for some time to come. I can’t find anyone else who is taking them

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      1. No way! That’s so cool that they are all stocked up. Well, I guess I will keep saving mine for now, and keep looking out for another program to send them to this year. It was such a good idea. Thank you for letting me know they are all set, Kathy.

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    1. I have a huge carton that I’ve been collecting from a group, probably several hundred bottles. Can’t believe that Malawi was the only place in the world that needed them.

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      1. Operation Christmas Child uses them to put fishing hooks, line, etc in, that goes overseas, so they have more supplies to fish with.

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  16. Wouldn’t we do better to simply donate the money that we would spend on mailing these? Seems to me to be a waste of money better spent? ❤

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  17. I recently donated a bunch of bottles to this project. I received a thank you letter in the mail that stated that they no longer were accepting bottles and had ended the campaign.

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  18. We are a nonprofit creative reuse center in rural Iowa. We just opened in August of 2015. We accept many, many items. Including medicine bottles that are CLEAN, no labels or sticky label residue.

    There really are not too many places that will take these in curbside recycling programs. We would much rather you send them to us than send them to the garbage. What we can’t use in classes and workshops or for local crafters, etc. we will be always searching for another organization like the Malawi Project and will send all the ones we have collected by donations.

    We encourage you to look for other creative reuse centers that are close to you. We all take pretty much the same stuff. If you do not find any near you, we take donations of items via UPS, FED EX and USPS, etc

    WE really need old keys and other metal things like clock/watch gears, silverwear, metal washers, nuts, bolts, etc. and craft supplies and so much more….

    We are always taking donations for items and looking for ways to donate them back to others. Our next big project will be to help a program called Put a Sock In It – which collects orphan socks to wash and distribute to homeless. And the list goes on.

    Our physical address is
    Make it Yours Upcycle Center
    411 Main Street
    Welton, Iowa 52774

    If you are using the postal service then use:
    PO Box 70
    instead of the street address, thanks.

    you can find more about us on Facebook and by visiting http://www.makeityoursupcyclecenter.org

    Thanks to all who take the time to search for a better solution for items than throwing them away.

    We are trying to “Save the landfills one junk drawer at a time.” Can you help? Please tell others about us, thanks a bunch.

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  19. Our church collected these bottles and sent them off. The project was so successful that we were told they reached their limit and are no longer collecting.

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    1. Tina, they received over a million bottles – they had to rent ware house space to hold them. Apparently it costs $15,000 to ship a boxcar that holds several hundred thousand bottles. They only have 12 volunteers working on the project, which is also trying to send food, etc. so it has become too unmanageable for them to continue.

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  22. If you have pill bottles many local animal rescue groups will take & use them to send bulk medication home to foster pets.

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  23. I love to have this option! I work in a free medical clinic and our state board of pharmacy has regulated us to the point that we cannot reuse medicine bottles for our patients. So we had to stop receiving bottles as donations and start buying them. Now I can tell everyone to send them to this address. Thanks so much!

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  25. I am curious if you are still accepting empty pill bottles? I have a USPS Box that they call the shoebox FULL! Ready to go….just say if you need them, and they are all yours 😉

    Thank you!!

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  26. Pingback: Empty Pill Bottles Desperately Needed (Take your meds & help others!) – Angela Theresa: Actor/Singer, Writer, Spirit Whisperer

  29. Is this still currently going? I have a ton of pill bottles that I would be willing to donate but I don’t want to pay to mail them if the project is not current.

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  30. Just want you to know I’m putting a large box of empty pill bottles in the mail to you today! (300 or 400 at least) It’s been fun collecting them the past few months. Once I mentioned it to a few friends it spread like wildfire. I’m enclosing my contact info in the box. I’m still on a mission so hopefully they’ll be another box soon!

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  32. I heard a rumor these might not be needed anymore. Can someone enlighten me? I have been collecting since August and have quite a lot to send.

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  35. I just found this and went to projects website it said as of December 20 2015 the project has been discontinued sue to recieving over a million bottle this is wonderful. Just thought I would let everyone know and also do you know anywhere else that needs medicine bottles. Thank you.

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  39. If you have medicine bottles and you’ve now realized that you CANNOT donate them to the Malawi Project because it has been discontinued, please know that you can also use those medicine bottles for Operation Christmas Child Shoeboxes, through the Franklin Graham Association. You can google this if you haven’t heard about it. We put a cork and a sinker and maybe even an artificial bait inside the bottle and wrap the fishing twine around the outside of the bottle to go into boys AND girls’ shoeboxes. Everyone needs to be able to fish. But you wouldn’t need thousands, or even hundreds. Just one medicine bottle per shoebox. It’s just a thought and an idea of what to do with your medicine bottles.

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  41. Check with your hospital to see if any of the Dr.’s or nurses go to any other countries, I’m sure they could use them. We have a nurse friend that goes to Ethiopia.

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  46. I use the app that comes with iPhone 6 to keep my meds updated, record emergency contact numbers, blood type, etc. can’t tell you how many times I’ve just opened the app and handed it to the Dr. or nurse.

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