WILTON — A free prescription waste collection day is planned from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, April 30, at several locations in Franklin County.

During a similar collection day held last year, residents filled several garbage bags with leftover drugs and prescriptions they “just didn’t know what to do with,” Lucille Porter, administrative assistant for the Wilton Police Department, said.

Porter will once again open a police bay door at the Wilton Public Safety building so that people can drive up and drop their medications into a receptacle, she said.

People need to know that nobody is monitoring what they drop off, she said.

Whatever is collected is then picked up by the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency.

The collections are sponsored by the federal and Maine DEA statewide to provide a safe and environmentally sound way for people to clean out their medicine cabinets of unwanted, expired or unneeded medicines, both prescription and over-the-counter products, according to a release from Androscoggin Valley Council of Governments.

The goal of the collection includes keeping the medications out of the environment as well as preventing the medications from being taken mistaken for others, or stolen.

Flushing unwanted medications down the toilet should not be done.

Providing a method to return all medications through one Medicine Collection Day showed a positive response last year.

Last September, Americans turned in 242,000 pounds of prescription drugs at nearly 4,100 sites operated by the DEA and at more than 3,000 state and local law enforcement agencies.

In the Franklin County area, collection sites on April 30 will be set up from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at:

* Carrabassett Valley Police Department on Sugarloaf Mountain.

* Franklin County Sheriff’s Office, 123 County Way, Farmington.

* Jay Hannaford Supermarket.

* Livermore Falls Police Department.

* Wilton Police Department.

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