Last year, 34 pharmacies in the Mackellar electorate, in the Northern Beaches of Sydney, participated in the Brown Bag Medicine Program.
The program was facilitated by local member Jason Falinski MP and local pharmacist Warwick Plunkett AM, with the goal of raising awareness of the National Return Unwanted Medicines (RUM) project.
Each of the pharmacies in the electorate were given a supply of branded brown paper bags to give to customers to use to return their expired or unwanted medicines back to the pharmacies.
The program was deemed a success, with an additional 300kg of expired and unwanted medicine returned via the selected pharmacies. This 20% increase represents a positive shift both in program engagement and awareness of the RUM Project.
The RUM Project would like to thank the participating pharmacies for their efforts in supporting the program, and the general public for their making use of the brown paper bag program.