Today I happened to clean out under my bathroom sink, the place where I store all of our medicine. I’d decided that, with school out, it was high time to freshen up everything that was expired–from notebooks my kids no longer need to the medicine with an expiration date from two or three years ago.

You can tell that it’s been quite awhile since I’d done this medicine cleaning-out task, because I found bottle after bottle of “children’s” liquid medicine. With my girls being able to swallow pills now and because they are each as tall as an adult (despite their young ages), we’ve long since moved on from “children’s” medicine to the adult kind.

When I discovered these long-expired bottles of medicine, my initial inclination was to dump the unused medicine in the toilet so I could wash out the bottles and recycle them. Then I remembered reading something about how people are unknowingly polluting waterways by tossing their expired medication in the toilet or washing it down the drain.

I know that trace amounts of various pharmaceutical drugs are showing up in water systems, but I’m not sure if the “no dumping” rule applies to over the counter medicine as well. I mean, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has suggested that expired prescription meds should be brought to a hazardous waste collection site for proper disposal or back to a pharmacy. The White House’s Drug Policy also addresses the issue of how to dispose of prescription drugs. But do the same rules hold true for OTC drugs like Motrin or Benadryl? Since I’m not sure, I’m going to keep those expired OTC medicines tightly sealed in their bottle and in the trash. I don’t want to pollute water just to recycle three bottles.

While we’re on the topic of water: a friend sent this link to an MSNBC story about how the don’t-drink-bottled-water message seems to have finally sunk in here in America. This story talks about how, even though bottled water consumption is still on the rise, the increase is the slowest it’s been in years.

Perhaps it’s the environmental message getting to people, who are choosing to use refillable bottles and are turning towards tap water to quench their thirst. (I’m still waiting to find the perfect replacement for my polycarbonate Nalgene bottles.) Then again, it could be the economy (stupid), because, let’s face it–buying bottled water is expensive. (Check out this hilarious Boing Boing posting on the most expensive bottled water in the world.) And in these tough economic times, with prices on the rise, why would you pay for something that you can get out of the tap for free?