Could you decorate them and make wallets for everyone? (Think Christmas gifts.

I think they may work for small objects if you don’t overfill them. (Think rubber bands and stuff like that.)

Maybe as an ironic “Congratulations on your new baby” card?

hillarious!!!!!

I’m going to do this for at least some!

Could you possibly ask your pharmacist to give you a brand that doesn’t come so over-packaged? They all give the days of the week on the blister packs, and if that doesn’t remind you then I don’t quite see how an enormous plastic clam shell thing is likely to help.

How about returning all the ones you have so far to the manufacturers with a complaint about over-packaging?

Why not consider swapping to the IUD? It lasts for four years and one tiny piece of trash, at the end of the day. Much more environmentally friendly, although of course, not everybody is well suited to it.

The pill is the only free birth control at the clinic anymore.

mine are rectangular, but they are held together in the back, with a plastic hinge-type-thing, similar to the way a clamshell is…

the biggest difficulty is that there are twenty-eight pill-sized holes in the back… because you punch them through from the inside…

I could see adding a mirror and making a nice compact. Or filling with solid perfume.
It’s funny, the hinged shape reminds me of a locket. Rather large for that, but maybe as a photo frame?

A photo frame… for baby pictures! XD

great ideas! thanks!

Mine is also a rectangle with 28 holes in the back —

Fill it with felt and use as a pin cushion.

I think all the ideas here are great, but I agree with contacting the manufacturer and trying to get them to reduce their packaging. I had a friend who went to India. When she came back, she said she couldn’t believe how much packaging we wasted in the US. Every time you buy clothing, it’s usually wrapped in tissue paper, with a sticker, in a bag, with a box if you need it.

Dagny McKinley
www.onnotextiles.com
organic apparel

while the pill is the only freebie you can get at the clinic, you may want to consider the nuvaring. it’s a plastic ring that you insert (can’t recycle it though) and you only use one per month. statistically it’s as effective as the pill. perhaps when you’re out of uni and paying for your own, it’ll become your BC of choice.

mine only as one small hole in the back, i use one for carrying around an assortment of drugs, ie. pain killers, allergy medicine, ect. but that only uses one

i used the nuva ring before the pill, and i loved it…but then they stopped funding for it, it’s too expensive…

sorry for being ignorant… what is uni?

medicine/healthcare is so expensive here, most employers don’t offer it… and it’s ridiculously expensive to get health insurance otherwise… i have two jobs, (neither is full-time, just 40 hrs a week together) but i still qualify for reproductive health benefits…

because i’m unmarried and don’t make enough to support a child…

which means the gov’ would be responsible for foodstamps, possibly welfare, finding and suing daddy for child support, medical while i was prego, medical for the baby til he/she is eighteen…

they’d prefer to pay for pills…

but not the nuva ring
which was easier
and had less packaging.

i just graduated from college w/a b.a.
maybe i’ll find a better job (ha)

then i can make better decisions about my reproductive/environmental health.

sorry so long and sort of off-topic…

Tamara - uni = university, college

Staying off topic but what the hey - whenever this discussion comes up, it makes me really appreciate the NHS. My coil, which lasts five years, apparently costs the NHS £90 and is completely free for me*. A quick google suggests to someone in the US it would be about $700 for the coil and about $400 for the fitting. I really, really heart the NHS.

* directly, I mean. I obviously pay for the NHS through my taxes etc.

Not sure if packaging is different in the UK than in the US, but in the US, although pharmacies or clinics usually give you a new plastic container each month, if you ask them not to, they won’t.. that way you can reuse the same each month and avoid having to find recycling solutions for all of the extras!

My friend gave me some of her old ones (mine come in these little vinal (can’t spell that word) pouches) and i covered the holes with a little glue, tin foil, then paper; then decorated them and gave them back to my friend who uses them to hold her small earings, thin cord necklaces, spare change, cut down photos, lip gloss, condoms when she’s going out (hey it prevents pregnancy but not stds … not sure sometimes about her, but what can you do?) and like a thousand other old things.

So anyway, with a little work all holes can be covered and things worked out. Personally I like the thin necklaces one since they’re a pain in the butt to keep untangled.