Woman Reveals Her Dad’s Ingenious Trick to Reuse Empty Medicine Bottles: "He Would Take..."

At this point in the environmental crisis, recycling and repurposing are the only way forward to a sustainable future. TikTok creator Brooke Prince (@brookprince_) and her father are doing the good work of reusing the orange medicine bottles that are made of heavy-duty plastic. Pill bottles are sturdy the way they are because they are built of number five plastic (polypropylene, or PP), per HowStuffWorks. Hence, they are also very difficult to recycle since they are not accepted in standard curbside recycling programs, per Medical Waste Pros. However, Prince enlightened the internet with an ingenious hack to repurpose empty pill bottles in a viral TikTok video. 

"If you grew up with a chronic illness or any illness really, you might relate to recycling your medicine bottles," Prince began. Standing in her father’s workspace, she flaunted his creativity, showing how the orange pill bottles were repurposed into floating pockets of storage. “My dad is the one who first started this. Once I finished the medicine, he would take the bottle and he would use it on his workbench stuff,” the creator revealed. She then went on to demonstrate how the storage worked and snapped one out of the seal caps screwed onto the board. One of the bottles was filled with wrenches while others had hot glue sticks and some more screws and wrenches. “You just screw the cap onto this,” she explained. 

There are a few more empty bottles kept in the drawers, just in case her father needed more floating storage. Prince shared that the large-sized bottles were from her initial years of diagnosis, particularly the first five years. Although she did not reveal what chronic sickness she suffered from. “My pediatrician made me take 6 MP and Balacide, I think, is what it’s called. The balacides were pretty big pills,” Prince noted, showing an estimated size of the pills with her fingers. Thankfully, her dosage has decreased now, thus, has an abundance of smaller pill bottles. They have been put to good use by her father nonetheless. “One way I reuse my old pill bottles,” the overlay text on the video teased. 

The video amassed thousands of views and caught the attention of viewers. Most people were thrilled by her father’s creativity and took inspiration from his repurposing technique. “This is so smart!” wrote an excited internet user (@321micco). Some others suggested new ways the pill bottles and other materials could be reused. “Oh, yeah, my late husband and I reuse them for many things! The largest ones are great for so many things!” wrote another viewer (@kiddo19574). Someone else (@midnightbirdz) related to the video and shared, “My dad did this with peanut butter jars in his workshop! How cool!” “Oh, also great for travel size. Thick lotions or hair creams. Things like that,” suggested a fellow TikTok user (@stacynixon783). 

A more active approach to recycling pill bottles is donating to organizations like Matthew 25: Ministries, which then distribute the bottles around the world where they are them or are less abundant. "Pill bottles that are not appropriate to include with shipments of medical supplies are recycled and may generate revenue that supports Matthew 25: Ministries' programs,” reads their official website. While the world is trying to cope with the aggressive production and dumping of plastic waste, not all plastic materials are the same. For instance, the caps of plastic bottles undergo a rigorous recycling process that is completely different from the one applied to the thinner bottles. Hence, segregation becomes an important challenge in the larger problem of plastic pollution. 

You can follow @brookeprince on TikTok for more videos.