Omnipod eco-friendly disposal

Yesterday Insulets, makers of the OmniPod insulin pump, announced a disposal program. To my knowledge they are the first diabetes product maker that's working to reduce the waste we all deal with to some extent, and they deserve a lot of kudos for it.

I spoke with Kevin Schmid, Insulet’s VP of Engineering, about how this works. Each OmniPod has a 357 watch battery, and usually uses up most of the charge so they cannot be reused in any way. In this disposal program the batteries are removed and recycled appropriately.

It's hard to recycle much of the OmniPod because they contain leftover insulin and have been worn, so they're 'contaminated'. This disposal program grinds up the remains of the OmniPod bodies, which substantially reduces the amount of space they occupy in a landfill.

Starting next month customers will get a disposal kit with their shipped OmniPods. They can return a months worth of used OmniPods for about $3. Insulet has also provided a set of answers to possible questions about their program.

Now I know some of you reading this will see all the reasons why this is not a perfect approach. But it's the first step towards making more of the items we use recyclable or easier to dispose of safely. Kevin told me that Insulet will be looking for ways to make this even more eco-friendly in the future.

There are a lot of us who wish living with diabetes didn't have such a big carbon footprint. Take a look at some of the photos in the Diabetes365 project that have been tagged with trash to see the stuff we collect.

I just hope that other diabetes suppliers will sit up and take notice of this important first step by Insulet. I know this will let me look more closely at the OmniPod system when I'm getting my next insulin pump.

Attribution: The photo above was taken by Kate Lilly and is one of many excellent photos on the Diabetes365 project site. She kindly let me use it in this post and retains all rights to this image.

Labels: green, insulet, omnipod, recycle

posted by Bernard @ 6:15 AM 1 Comments Links to this post  

Diabetes product makers - what about recycling?

One of the things that really bothers me about diabetes is the sheer amount of stuff that we go through.

I'm using a Dexcom CGMS and two insulin pumps and a OneTouch Ultra right now. So over the course of a month I basically throw away about this much disposables stuff

• 9-10 insulin infusion sets, with tubing, reservoirs, packaging, used IV prep wipes, etc.
  
• 180 used blood glucose test strips with blood on them
  
• 3-4 empty test strip containers
  
• 1-2 used lancets
  
• 2-4 Dexcom sensors plus their inserters and wrapping
  
• 1-2 empty insulin vials
  
• 1 empty Symlin vial

It really bothers me to generate this amount of completely unrecyclable waste.

I know it would be a challenge, but couldn't some of this be made from recycled materials, or at least coded to that it is recyclable? It might only be a small amount of possible recycling but over the course of a year it would really add up.

I'd like to challenge materials folks at the various companies to think about this as they design packaging. See how you can reduce the waste so we're leaving less of an imprint behind us.

For example, I really liked the wrapping for my new Dexcom system. It arrived in a big plastic bubble (like cell phone gadgets at stores) and I was not looking forward to opening it. Imagine my joy when it popped right open and it was marked with a #1 PET symbol so I could actually recycle it. Nice job Dexcom folks.

Labels: diabetes, recycle, reuse, trash

posted by Bernard @ 12:40 PM 3 Comments Links to this post