28 May 2025

Dr Angelina Lim

I saw my family member throw unused antibiotic syrup down the sink and another family member throw her inhaler in the general rubbish bin. I thought, didn’t anyone tell you not to do this and how this is harmful to the environment? I think if you ask some of your friends, like mine, they’ll most likely say “I didn’t know you couldn’t dispose of medicines yourself at home”. This got me thinking: the public seems to be largely unaware of safe medicine disposal and its impacts on the environment. Community pharmacists are at the forefront of providing advice to the general public and we have so much to offer in our role. Pharmacists have the opportunity to correct misconceptions from the general public and also impart knowledge on what consumers can do to help. I decided to conduct a   with my team Catherine Forrester (Australia), Renier Coetzee (South Africa), Manjiri Gharat (India), and five very committed undergraduate pharmacy students – Ruo Wei Sam, Aiza Mak, Jia Khun, Mohammed Amir and Nur Amir.  We captured what pharmacists across Australia were telling patients who needed to throw out unused antibiotic syrup. Of 1577 pharmacists called across Australia, over 59% of pharmacists recommended incorrect disposal methods, such as putting the leftover antibiotic syrup in the home rubbish bin, or down the sink or toilet. This made me realise that perhaps the lack of awareness of safe disposal and consequences for the planet extended to the health professionals themselves. The study also highlighted that pharmacists mentioned some of these solutions as they felt this was the most convenient for the patient, especially for remote residents. This study shows a need for other convenient solutions for safe medication disposal besides returning medicines to the pharmacy, which my team hopes to focus on next. In the meantime, one possible initiative could be to include planetary health education as part of health education programmes. As an academic, I have an opportunity to teach students to get into good habits early, which hopefully leads to pharmacists teaching the public good habits. We registered as planetary health champions (Catherine Forrester, Suzanne Caliph, Aisling McEvoy and myself) through our institution and joined forces with Liza Barbour and Monash to co-design planetary health education. Together we co-designed a planetary health workshop on antimicrobial stewardship with a focus on waste disposal. The workshop was delivered to our third-year undergraduate pharmacy students (in Australia and Malaysia) to increase their understanding of pharmaceutical waste disposal and impacts (credit to our amazing student designers Perri Teoh, Zachary Cobucci, Mia Curigliano, Talia Raman and Alex Steel). Students were assessed on these concepts in their final exam and achieved a mean score of 85.3% for the planetary health question and showed competencies across the five domains of the planetary health education framework (Guzmán et al, Lancet 2021): interconnection within nature; the Anthropocene and health; system thinking and complexity; equity and justice; and movement building and system change. We hope this will support emerging health professionals to embed planetary health in their day-to-day practice.    

Dr. Angelina Lim is a senior lecturer and deputy course director at the Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Monash University. Angelina is a practising pharmacist, educator and researcher, currently holding an adjunct position at Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) working on projects in disability and paediatric endocrinology. Angelina is passionate about pharmacy education and curriculum design, as well as antimicrobial stewardship and planetary health. She hopes to prepare graduates better to advocate for better sustainability practices.