European Household Pharmaceutical Waste Disposal Practices Survey, 2025

A 2025 Europe-wide expert survey collected structured information on national legislation, collection systems, and disposal practices for unused or expired household medicines. Forty valid responses from experts across 35 European countries provide data on annual collection rates, public awareness campaigns, and funding mechanisms. The dataset was authored by Przemyslaw Kardas and published on figshare in April 2026.

Use Cases

• Compare national legislation and collection systems for household pharmaceutical waste across European countries.
• Analyze the relationship between Extended Producer Responsibility schemes and reported collection volumes.
• Assess the prevalence and effectiveness of pharmacy-based take-back schemes.
• Evaluate the scope and consistency of public awareness campaigns on medicine disposal.
• Identify gaps in systematic monitoring and reimbursement mechanisms for collection systems.

Strengths

• Survey covers 35 European countries, providing a broad geographic scope.
• Results include specific annual collection rates ranging from 12.4 to over 200 g/capita.
• Data distinguishes between countries with dedicated legislation (30) and those without (5).
• Analysis includes reported public awareness campaigns in 22 countries.

Limitations

• Row count and column-level documentation are unknown, requiring inspection after download.
• The dataset is a PDF summary of survey results, not the raw survey data.
• Systematic monitoring data were unavailable in most surveyed countries.

Provenance

Source

figshare

Collection Method

Europe-wide, cross-sectional online expert survey conducted from March to October 2025.

Time Range

Survey conducted in 2025.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-28 05:27:46.

Geography

35 European countries.