Customers at the Shoppers Drug Mart on Bank and Cooper can request bioharzard disposal bins for their used needles free of charge. Then they can return the bin to be thrown away properly.
Discarded needles in public washrooms are a dangerous problem, and local businesses are doing something about it.
Last month, the Tim Hortons at Bank and Cooper streets put biohazard disposal bins in their bathrooms after employees saw needles in the garbage and feared they would prick someone.
But this is not an isolated incident.
Sarah MacNeil, a Clarence Street Second Cup employee, said she constantly finds drug paraphernalia in the bathrooms.
“We have this problem daily,” she said.
MacNeil described finding used needle tips, syringes and marijuana. She has also found dirty drug spoons hidden in fluorescent ceiling lights and a bag of drugs in a ceiling vent.
The store uses a customers-only policy for their washrooms, but MacNeil said this doesn’t solve the problem. Turning someone away because they look suspicious isn’t easy, she said.
“It’s really uncomfortable, especially at night,” she said. “Having to turn someone down and then seeing them on the street at 1 a.m. after you close is a little scary.”
MacNeil said the coffee shop is considering installing ultraviolet light bulbs.
Under the bluish lights, visibility is maintained but people can’t see their veins and therefore can’t inject drugs into them. MacNeil said she’s heard of Vancouver businesses successfully using this strategy.
The disposal bin in Tim Hortons is a less expensive, effective way to solve the problem, said Rachel Douglas, director of public affairs at the Tim Hortons head office in Toronto.
“We are pleased to no longer have any hazardous materials lying around our store washrooms,” she said. The number of Tim Hortons locations using bins isn’t available, Douglas said, because they are implemented on a case-by-case basis.
The bright yellow, rectangular containers have a small opening in the top for toxic waste. The Bank and Cooper location got their containers from Shoppers Drug Mart.
Customers can request a bin free of charge and then return it so the waste is properly disposed of, said Bryce Wong, a pharmacist at a Centretown Shoppers Drug Mart.
Diabetics often ask for bins to throw out their needles safely, Wong said.
Ottawa Public Health uses safety disposal bins too, as part of the Black Box Project. About twenty-five big, black containers are scattered throughout the city for drug users to leave needles in. Johnson’s Environmental Products, an Ottawa company, supplies the bins.
Drug users are receptive to throwing their needles away safely, said Russ Salo, the Johnson’s sales manager who deals with Ottawa Public Health.
“If there’s a disposal unit, they’ll use it,” he said. “Because if they do that, they are less likely to be hassled by the authorities.”
The black bins cost $1,695 each, but smaller bins suited for indoors are $300 each.
The problem of dirty needles has increased, said Jack McCarthy, the executive director of Somerset West Community Health Centre in Centretown.
He said he thinks it has to do with city council’s decision to stop giving money to the safe inhalation program, which gives clean pipes to users who smoke crack cocaine.
McCarthy said that because fewer people are getting pipes to inhale drugs safely, many of them are injecting instead. When city council stopped contributing in July 2007, they left only smaller contributors supplying the pipes.
Any method to reduce needles left in washrooms is a good idea, McCarthy said. Ottawa has higher rates of Hepatitis C and HIV than many other cities, including Toronto, and disposal bins could help change that, he said.
“What’s the problem here? That people are being put in harm’s way because of dirty needles,” McCarthy said.
“People who are going to be injecting anyway need a safer way to dispose of their needles and minimize the harm to the public.”