CVS Is Switching to Aluminum Pill Bottles

CVS is changing up its over-the-counter pill bottles, swapping out the plastic for aluminum.

For decades, pills have typically come packaged in hard plastic containers. While technically recyclable, these containers tend to be accepted in fewer places than the much more broadly recyclable aluminum.

The retail pharmacy chain will soon start selling generic, CVS-brand versions of some allergy and pain-relief medications bottled up in aluminum.

“For OTC medications, aluminum packaging offers several practical and sustainability benefits,” wrote Mike Wier, vice president of store brands at CVS, in an email to WIRED. “Like more traditional packaging options, aluminum provides a strong barrier to help maintain stability and shelf life.”

The first aluminum offerings start with CVS’s value-size versions of allergy medications and general pain-relief products. These are the bigger containers of store-brand versions of medications with the same active ingredients as Allegra, Benadryl, Claritin, Zyrtec, Tylenol, and Advil. The new bottles are lighter than the plastic versions, but CVS has not responded to WIRED’s question about exactly how much they weigh. The pills inside will stay the same, even if they might make a little more noise bonking around now. CVS also says it is not increasing the prices of the bottles after the switch in materials.

The aluminum bottles will indeed be more recyclable, but Wier says people will still need to do the same things to properly recycle their aluminum bottles as their plastic ones, like removing the label and cap. (The caps on the aluminum bottles are the same caps on the plastic ones, and they don’t go in the same bin as the base of the bottle.)

Recyclability seems like an added bonus for CVS rather than the main goal of the retailer’s move to aluminum. The change comes as part of a brand refresh for CVS, a little over a year after the company downsized by shutting down 270 stores across the US. In statements online, CVS says it is redesigning its branding to make finding medications easier. It’s also likely a move to help counter the perception people get when walking into a CVS and finding nearly everything in the store locked up in an effort to prevent shoplifting.

For now, the aluminum bottles are available only for select over-the-counter meds. CVS says it is waiting to see how its customers respond before expanding the aluminum bottles to more medications or using them for prescription orders.