[Anchor]

More than 10 million Mounjaro injection pens were supplied in the first half of this year alone. While the use of obesity treatment injections is surging accordingly, there are no clear guidelines on how households should dispose of them after use. Hospitals and pharmacies tell people to handle it at home themselves, but government guidelines do not even mention the matter.

Reporter Jo Yoon-ha has the story.

[Reporter]

Injection pens are sometimes sorted out for recycling along with plastic egg packaging or wrapped in kitchen towels and thrown into regular pay-as-you-throw trash bags.

These are used injection pens of obesity treatments such as Mounjaro and Wegovy.

For Wegovy, where the needle and the pen are separate, only the needle needs to be changed, resulting in one pen being discarded per month. For Mounjaro, which is an all-in-one type where the needle and pen are attached, an injection pen is discarded every single week.

The problem is that neither users nor sellers know the precise disposal guidelines.

[Pharmacy: You can just throw them away at home. (There's a needle, though.) There's a cap. Put the cap on. It's best to dispose of it so that it isn't contaminated. (In a regular trash bag?) Yes.]

[Mounjaro User: I was told that I could just throw this away at home as regular trash. It still felt a bit unsettling. Since you get an injection, there's blood on the needle.]

The Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment guidelines only contain details regarding syringe needles and syringes, which fall under medical waste, but there is no mention of "injection pens."

This is because Wegovy was launched in 2024 and Mounjaro was released last year, while the government guidelines have not been updated since they were revised back in 2023.

So how should they be discarded?

The Ministry's stance is that self-administered injections fall under "disposed pharmaceuticals" according to existing guidelines and should be discarded in collection boxes installed at local community centers or through mailboxes.

However, the disposed pharmaceutical collection boxes at community centers instruct people to discard pills, powder medicines, ointments, and liquid medicines, and similarly lack any guidance regarding injection pens.

Disposed pharmaceuticals can cause water and soil pollution or induce resistant bacteria and therefore must be collected separately and incinerated. However, injection pens, which inevitably retain residual medication, have been left neglected for over two years.

[Lee Jong-bae / National Assembly Climate and Labor Committee Member (People Power Party): The government needs to clearly establish and present disposal standards to the public so that citizens can know and follow them.]

Between their release and last July, prescriptions for Wegovy and Mounjaro reached 2.7 million cases, and more than 11 million Mounjaro injection pens were supplied in the first half of this year alone.

(Photo: Yonhap News) (Video Reporting: Choi Ho-jun, Lee Byung-joo, Lee Seung-hwan | Video Editing: Kim Jun-hee | VJ: Shin So-young)