Do you use needles, lancets, or syringes at home? Do you know about the Safe Sharps program?

If you use any of these products, please take advantage of the Safe Sharps program to dispose of them properly. It's free and it's easy. Go to any drugstore or Canadian Diabetes Supply Centre and ask for a Safe Sharps container. The pharmacist or technician will give you a container specially designed for needles. Keep your used sharps in this container, and when it is full, bring it back to the pharmacy and exchange it for a new one for free.

Never put sharps out for curbside collection, regardless of what kind of container they are in. Often, we see sharps inside glass jars or detergent bottles; but these bottles break under the tires of heavy equipment as they are pushed onto the conveyor belt to be sorted. Loose sharps end-up on the sorting line, and employees get seriously hurt.

It's not just a little poke. When an employee is stuck, it's a year-long process that affects their life significantly. They don't know where the needle came from, who used it, or what diseases it might carry. For a full year the employee is regularly tested for things like HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis. Their relationship with their spouse is changed. If their child or grandchild falls and scrapes his knee they have to put on gloves before they can clean his cut and put on a band-aid. For the next 365 days that person lives under pressure until they are given a clean bill of health.

Please use the appropriate Safe Sharps container, and never put sharps in your garbage, blue bags, compost or paper recycling.

Listen to Angela and Jonathan deliver this important message in February's Talkin' Trash.