Oak Park village officials have kickstarted a service where Village Hall would accept sharps from residents so the items can be disposed of properly.
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Sharps, in this case, refers to dangerous medical objects including syringes, autoinjectors, lancets and infusion sets. If residents bring in sharps for disposal, they must be properly packaged in hard plastic containers that are leak proof, thick walled and durable, officials said.
Once a resident comes in with an appropriately contained sharp, a trained staff member will assist with the collection of the items. The village also offers containers for sharps for residents to take home.
Oak Park Village Hall, 123 Madison St., will accept sharps during open hours Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Improperly disposed sharps can pose a hazard for sanitation workers, but residents reported trouble with proper disposal of the items, said Sara Semelka, Health Education manager at the Oak Park Public Health Department.
“We want to make sure that people have a safe way to do this so it’s safe for everyone because we also don’t want them (sharps) just out and about,” Semelka said. “People just dispose of them randomly and sometimes they’re found in alleys and stuff like that.”
Last summer, Semelka said she and other participating staff members trained and researched how to properly dispose of sharps.
The village works with a company called Stericycle, a medical waste disposal company that, as of now, collects the sharps from the village about once a month, Semelka said.
The service has garnered positive feedback from the community, Semelka said. About one person per day disposes of their sharps, she said.
“Some people will chat with us when we’re collecting them, putting them in the bags and stuff, and people seem to be grateful for the service,” she said. “Some people don’t really just know what to do, when they have these at-home medications.”
The village also offers a place for people to drop off their unused prescription medications, but only if they are in the pill form. There is a self-serve kiosk inside the Village Hall by the police station, which is downstairs, where people can drop off their medications.
Semelka said that service was the impetus for the expanded effort related to medical sharps.
“When people would come in to drop their unused prescription medications, sometimes they would ask, ‘do you have a place for sharps?’ and we would say no, so it is something that kind of also gave us the idea in addition to people calling in,” Semelka said.
The offices of Oak Park Township, 105 S. Oak Park Ave., also offers a place for residents to drop off their sharps, from 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Mondays and Fridays.
Their service started last fall after township officials received multiple inquiries from residents about where to dispose of their sharps, said Angela Aggen, the Oak Park Township prevention coordinator.
At one of the two National Prescription Drug Take Back Days last year, Aggen said she noticed a large demand for people to dispose of their sharps.
The township offers an outdoor drop off of sharps for residents to drop off single-use sharps and another drop off inside the township for large disposals, she said.
Since October, they’ve collected 170 pounds of sharps, Aggen said.
“We’ve had a good response,” Aggen said. “We’ve been receiving a lot of them actually.”