This Is Your Home On Drugs: How Unused Medication Becomes Electricity
STANISLAUS COUNTY (CBS13) — There's a chance Californians are using prescription drugs to boost something in their lives—the power in their homes.
It may look like a typical trash truck, but what's being disposed of inside is anything but typical. Millions of pills are collected in a matter of hours at prescription drug take back events.
The medication unloaded at places like the Covanta Energy plant in Tulsa are used to create power. The San Francisco Drug Enforcement Agency's office confirms the pills are disposed of in a similar way in California.
CBS13 has learned it's happening in Covanta's plane in Crow's Landing in Stanislaus County.
A giant "Jaws-like" crane moves the drugs and other household and industrial waste to the next step of the process. The drugs and other waste are ultimately taken into a high-tech boiler. From there, they're combusted at a really high temperature. The intense heat in the boiler is as hot as lava.
It generates industrial quality steam at 650 degrees Fahrenheit, which in turn makes renewable energy.
In 2016, the El Dorado County Sheriff's Office helped the DEA collect 653 pounds of discarded prescriptions from county residents and took them to Covanta's Crow's Landing plant. There, Covanta processes 800 tons of trash, including the drugs, generating enough power for 20,000 homes each year.
If the drugs weren't converted for energy, they could end up in landfills or in the water supply from people flushing their pills, which is something you should not do.
