But Alamaro has some very practical ideas, too – and one is particularly relevant to an Associated Press investigation into the suffusion of the nation's water supplies with potentially harmful prescription drugs that can't be removed by current treatment technologies.
Often the drugs pass through our bodies unmetabolized. But sometimes unneeded drugs are thrown away – a practice that could be bad for the environment and for us, and is also terribly wasteful.
Alamaro's plan: a convenient system for recycling drugs.
Rather than distributing them in bottles, pharmaceuticals would come in single-serve foil packs; leftovers could be returned to pharmacies with their integrity guaranteed, and a reimbursement given to the person who returned them.
Many states are already experimenting with drug recycling programs in hospitals and nursing homes, but the phenomenon has yet to reach consumers at large. Alamaro's plan could fix that. It wouldn't stop all drugs from going down the drain and into our aquifers, but it'd be a start.
"The publications there say that $1 billion a year of prescription drugs is wasted," he said in an email. "In fact it is about $40 billion a year in the US alone."
Image: Emuishere Peliculas*
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