Recycling Insulin Pens: A Call for Action!

Insulin pens are widely used by people with diabetes for insulin application. Most often ready-to-use pens are used; however, disposal of these pens generates a considerable amount of plastic waste. Until now such pens have almost always been disposed of with household waste. We recommend to establish a nationwide recycling process for insulin pens in Germany over the next few years (PenDE). Collecting and sorting of the finished pens have several facets, which are discussed in this commentary. It is primarily about recycling the actual product, ie, the finished pens, and not their packaging and packaging inserts. Such a project is only possible in close cooperation with the insulin pen manufacturers. The goal is to establish material cycles, ie, multiple use of materials such as recycled plastic.