Sharps
It is illegal to throw your home generate sharps into your garbage or recycling containers!
Home-generated sharps include hypodermic needles, pen needles, intravenous needles, lancets, and other devices that are used to penetrate the skin for the delivery of medications that you use in your home.
To ensure compliance with the new law, the City recommends that customers with home-generated sharps use one of the following disposal methods:
- Take it Back: Effective August 26, 2010 all retailers, medical offices, hospitals and veterinarian clinics, and other providers that dispense sharps to the general public in the City of Sacramento must provide a sharps collection and disposal program at their locations at no additional cost to the general public. Click here for Chapter 8.128 of the Sacramento City Code relating to home-generated sharps waste management.
- Mail it Back: A convenient and confidential way of properly disposing your sharps. Sharps disposal services approved by the California Department of Health can be found at: http://www.ciwmb.ca.gov/HHW/Sharps
- Take it to a Household Hazardous Waste Facility (HHW): The following HHWs in the region will accept home-generated sharps.
Sacramento Recycling and Transfer Station
8491 Fruitridge Rd. (916) 379-0500
North Area Recovery Station
4450 Roseville Rd. (916) 875-5555
This is a state law. More information regarding Sharps Waste can be found through the California Integrated Waste Management Board
