Wouldn't a coffee can, with the lid taped on and a slit cut in it work, too? I just wrap mine in cardboard and duct tape - works for me,

old laundry detergent bottle

Sure, any sort of rigid container that would let you put a lid on it would work.
Wrapping them in cardboard and duct tape is, essentially, jury-rigging your own one-time-use container. Wouldn't be my own choice, because it's too much work, and I'd have to go scrounge up some cardboard--I don't always have some around.

In fact, I did this bcs, what I -used- to do was find some other container already in the trash to put them in. But it was taking too long, bcs I didn't always have something suitable right then.

And when I need to discard a blade, I don't want it hanging around loose, and I don't want to do a lot of fussing, bcs I'm afraid I'll cut myself while I'm looking for some kind of solution.
(Plus, when I need to discard it, it's because I'm in the -middle- of some craft, and I want to get back to it.)
So creating the "place" (a place for everything, and everything...), it's been much faster! (I'm in the middle of Comicon costume construction--lots of foam board)

I also wanted something small--I don't discard sharps all that often, and I needed to put it in the hall closet, which is not very big. So this small container was really the perfect solution.

And, I don't have any of those things on hand. We don't drink that kind of coffee.

For years and years the Base Clinic has insisted we put all diabetic syringes and "pokey things" in a red "bio-hazard" container. We have to return it to the Clinic for disposal when it's 2/3s full. Lord help you if there is one tiny fraction of an inch of any syringe protruding over that 2/3s mark, too.

Suddenly, they give me flak for wanting a new, larger container last time I picked up prescriptions. (Now I use two syringes and five "pen" needles a day) I've used hundreds of the containers and now they say...

"Oh just put the syringes and lancets in any plastic bottle or jug, duct tape it closed, and put them in the regular garbage." He suggested I use a liquid laundry detergent bottle.

Now it seems to be no big deal to just "throw them out," when for years before I had to make a 20 mile one-way trip to turn them in.

Are my needles and lancets a bio-hazard or not? I do not have any blood-born diseases. I have a clipper to remove the needle from the syringes. I recap them after snipping the needle off. The lancets just get tossed in.

You know that your needles and lancets aren't a bio-hazard, but anyone finding them in the dump does not know where they are from. The laundry detergent bottle should be fine. I would tape the cap on with duct tape for the sake of security, because after all, they are still sharp.

I will be putting them in some type of strong plastic container.

Do you think it would be of any use to put a red "bio-hazard" or "discarded sharps" sticker on the bottles?

In CA, it's against the law to dispose of medical sharps in the garbage. I hadn't thought about other types of sharps though.

Talley Sue, I love your idea for a smaller container for sharps. I had a kidney disease cat for a number of years and used IV needles with her. They didn't accumulate very fast, so when I used even a small detergent bottle, it took up so much unnecessary space. Eventually I settled on using instant coffee containers with the pop-up lids.

Caroline, if it's okay to discard them in the trash where you are, I don't know if it would be worthwhile to label them, but you could always do what I was told to do here for the hazardous waste people, which was to wrap the container with masking tape so it would be hard to open, and then label it with a red pen saying "medical sharps." When we use to turn in our cat's sharps at the local waste place, I was careful to label the container so there was no question what it was. Later, they made it so you had to put your container of sharps in the burn barrel yourself- I noticed that the choice of most people seems to be those plastic containers that foldgers ground coffee comes in- probably because of the size and red color. Either way, I was told to use opaque plastic because it's thicker than clear, and less likely that a sharp would work its way through.

You could also disinfect them by filling the bottle with a bleach solution and letting it sit.

I only produce a small quantity of used sharps in my sewing/quilting hobbies. So I have an Altoids container for this purpose.

Back in my days as an RN on a med/surg floor in the late 1960s, believe it or not, we had a 'sharps container' that was a cardboard box produced for this purpose! I remember picking it up to take to the trash room one Christmas eve and poking myself with a needle that protruded from the bottom seam. No idea which patient the needle had been used on. No HIV/AIDS then but Hep B has been with us for eons. I didn't get sick and that event spurred the hospital into getting wall-mounted sharps containers.

(never mind--a duplicate)

This post was edited by talley_sue_nyc on Sun, Nov 2, 14 at 18:07

Caroline, my daughter's needles go in a milk jug. We were instructed when full to tape the lid on, and write "sharps, do not recycle" and in the trash it goes. She uses about 5-7 syringes a day and just one lancet per day. We were instructed not to re-cap or do anything about the needle, just another risk of getting poked.

It really a must to throw any of our sharp objects in a container it mainly because to avoid injury and spreading of infections that can cause serious health conditions where in most common infections are Hepatitis B (HBV), Hepatitis C (HCV) and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), that's why we must dispose our sharp objects properly.

Impact Hygiene - Sharps

http://impacthygiene.com.au/sharps-disposal/