Currently, waste water treatment plants still lack the ability to effectively remove pharmaceutical waste from water.
Such waste reaches the Baltic Sea via sewers and waste water (including birth control pills, antibiotics and painkillers), some of which is so harmful that it affects fishes' ability to procreate. The female hormones in birth control pills, for example, can leave male fish sterile. The components of antidepressants which reach the aquatic environment have harmful effects on various aquatic organisms. It is believed that on average, one in every three pills manufactured reaches the sea.
Pharmaceutical waste can also make its way back onto human dinner plates.
In Estonia you can take your old pills back to any pharmacy.