What to Do With Old Glucose Meters

Old glucose meters can be donated, recycled through specialized e-waste programs, repurposed for certain uses, or disposed of safely as household medical waste, but they should never just be tossed in the regular trash without preparation. Because these devices have come into contact with blood and contain small batteries and electronic components, getting rid of one involves a few more steps than dropping it in the bin. The good news is that every option is straightforward once you know the considerations involved.

Why You Cannot Just Throw It Away

A glucose meter is a small electronic device with a circuit board, a battery (usually a coin cell lithium or silver oxide battery), and a plastic housing. That alone qualifies it as electronic waste in many jurisdictions, meaning it should be handled through e-waste channels rather than general household garbage. But there is a second issue that people tend to overlook: contamination. Point-of-care blood glucose meters are frequently contaminated by blood, and both bacterial and viral organisms can survive on surfaces and in dried blood for extended periods.¹ Even if you have wiped your meter down regularly, trace amounts of blood can remain in crevices around the test strip port and along seams in the casing.

This does not mean your old meter is a serious hazard sitting in a drawer. But it does mean that anyone handling it after you, whether a recycling worker, a donation recipient, or a waste processor, deserves to receive it in a condition that minimizes risk. Cleaning it before passing it along is not just polite; in some settings it is a regulatory requirement.

Cleaning a Meter Before You Do Anything Else

Before donating, recycling, or even trashing an old meter, give it a thorough wipe-down. Most manufacturers recommend using a damp cloth with a mild disinfectant. Research on disinfecting glucose monitors has found that standard cleaning with water or dilute disinfectant does not affect meter accuracy, though higher concentrations of alcohol-based disinfectants and hydrogen peroxide can damage some meter types.² If you are passing the meter along for reuse, stick with a cloth dampened with a 10% bleach solution or a standard EPA-registered surface disinfectant. Wipe the entire exterior, paying attention to the area around the strip port. Let it air dry completely before packaging it.

If you are simply throwing it away and do not plan to donate it, accuracy no longer matters, so you can be more aggressive with cleaning. A bleach wipe or alcohol pad across all surfaces is fine. The goal at that point is decontamination, not preserving the sensor.

Donating a Working Meter

If your meter still functions and you have simply upgraded or switched brands, donation is the most useful option. Diabetes supplies are expensive, and plenty of people, both domestically and abroad, lack access to basic monitoring equipment. Several avenues exist for getting a working meter into someone else’s hands.

Nonprofit organizations: Groups like Insulin for Life and CR3 Diabetes collect unused diabetes supplies, including meters, test strips, lancets, and insulin, and distribute them to people who cannot afford them or live in countries with limited access. Most accept meters that are clean and in working order.
Local diabetes support groups: Community organizations, churches, and diabetes education centers sometimes run supply drives. A quick call to your local health department or a diabetes educator can point you to one.
Direct giving: Online communities for people with diabetes frequently have members looking for supplies. Forums and social media groups dedicated to diabetes management often facilitate meter exchanges.

One practical limitation is that a donated meter is only useful if the recipient can also get compatible test strips. Meters are often brand- and model-specific when it comes to strips, and strips are the ongoing cost that makes monitoring expensive. Donating a meter alongside any unused, unexpired strips you have makes the gift far more practical. A meter without strips is like a printer without ink.

The Battery Problem

The small coin cell battery inside most glucose meters is easy to forget about, but it deserves attention. Batteries are a pivotal yet often overlooked component of diabetes technologies, and they can have a detrimental environmental impact when they end up in landfills.³ Coin cell batteries contain metals like lithium, silver oxide, or manganese dioxide. In a landfill, casings corrode and these materials can leach into soil and groundwater.

Removing the battery before disposal is simple for most meters: pop open the battery compartment, take out the coin cell, and tape over both sides with a small piece of clear tape to prevent short-circuiting. You can then drop it in a battery recycling bin at most hardware stores, electronics retailers, or municipal hazardous waste collection sites. Many communities also hold periodic household hazardous waste days that accept batteries of all sizes. Once the battery is out, the remaining meter body is lighter and safer to handle through e-waste channels.

Recycling the Device Itself

Getting the electronics recycled is the environmentally responsible move, but it is also where things get frustrating. A survey of people with diabetes found that roughly two-thirds cited a lack of recycling mechanisms as a common frustration with diabetes products.⁴ Unlike large electronics, which many retailers will take back, a small handheld meter falls into an awkward category. It is too small for most curbside e-waste programs to bother with, and too specialized for generic electronics recyclers to have a clear process for.

Your best options for recycling the meter itself include:

Manufacturer take-back programs: Some meter manufacturers accept old devices by mail. Check the company’s website or call their customer service line. A few run periodic trade-in promotions where returning an old meter earns a discount on a new one.
Municipal e-waste drop-off: Most cities and counties have designated e-waste collection points, often at transfer stations or recycling centers. A glucose meter qualifies as small consumer electronics. Call ahead to confirm they accept medical devices.
Retailer take-back: Some pharmacies and electronics retailers participate in e-waste collection programs. Best Buy, for example, accepts many small electronics. Policies vary by location, so check before making a trip.

If none of these options are accessible and the meter is truly at end of life, removing the battery for separate recycling and then disposing of the cleaned plastic-and-circuit-board shell in the regular trash is an imperfect but common fallback. It is not ideal, but it is substantially better than tossing the whole thing, battery included, into a garbage bag.

The Broader E-Waste Picture for Diabetes Devices

Your single old meter might seem insignificant in environmental terms, but the cumulative waste from diabetes technology is substantial. A global estimate of waste from continuous glucose monitoring systems alone, which share many components with traditional meters, put the total at roughly 20,000 tons of packaging-related waste and about 580 tons of direct sensor-related waste per year, including around 130 tons of electronic circuit boards and 110 tons of batteries worldwide.⁵ Traditional fingerstick meters add to that total. In the United States, insulin pumps and related devices alone contribute an estimated 10.7 million kilograms of waste per year.⁴

The problem is structural. Diabetes device manufacturers have been slow to build recycling infrastructure into their product lifecycle, and regulatory hurdles around medical devices classified as biohazardous make recycling programs more complicated to set up than for, say, old cell phones. Advocacy groups have been pushing for manufacturer responsibility programs, but progress has been gradual. In the meantime, individual action, removing batteries, cleaning devices, and using available e-waste channels, is the most realistic path.

Do Not Forget the Accessories

When you retire a glucose meter, you often have a pile of associated supplies as well: unused test strips, a lancing device, leftover lancets, and the carrying case. Each has its own disposal considerations.

Unused, unexpired test strips are the single most valuable item to donate. They are the ongoing consumable that makes monitoring possible, and they are expensive. If you have sealed, unexpired vials, a donation organization will be glad to have them. Expired strips should be discarded.

Lancets and the lancing device present a different issue. Used lancets are sharps, and sharps disposal is an area where practice falls short of guidelines. Research has found that nearly four out of five people with diabetes dispose of used sharps in regular household garbage bags, and about a third do not believe they need to collect and return used sharps to a proper facility.⁶ This is a genuine safety concern. Used lancets can puncture trash bags and injure sanitation workers or anyone handling the waste. The recommended practice is to place used lancets in an FDA-cleared sharps container or, at minimum, a rigid, puncture-resistant container like a laundry detergent bottle with a screw cap. Many pharmacies sell inexpensive sharps containers, and some communities provide free ones or accept filled containers for proper disposal.

The lancing device itself, the spring-loaded handle that holds the lancet, is not a sharp on its own once the lancet is removed. It can be cleaned and donated alongside a meter or disposed of as regular waste.

Repurposing a Meter for Pet Health

Here is one that surprises most people: a human glucose meter can be repurposed for basic blood sugar monitoring in pets, particularly dogs. Research comparing a portable human blood glucose meter to a laboratory analyzer in healthy dogs found no significant difference between the readings. The mean capillary blood glucose measured by the human meter was 5.06 mmol/L, compared to 4.90 mmol/L from the reference lab method, and the difference was not statistically significant.⁷

This matters because diabetic dogs and cats are more common than many pet owners realize, and veterinary-specific glucometers can be pricey. If your dog has been diagnosed with diabetes and your veterinarian is on board, an old human meter can serve as a home monitoring tool. A few caveats apply. The study focused on healthy dogs, and accuracy in diabetic animals or in cats may differ. Veterinary-calibrated meters exist for a reason: they are optimized for the different glucose distribution between plasma and red blood cells in animal species. A human meter may read slightly high or low depending on the species and the individual animal. Always discuss this with your vet before using a human meter on your pet, and never adjust insulin doses based solely on a human meter reading without veterinary guidance.

That said, for trend monitoring between vet visits, keeping an old meter around for this purpose is a practical form of reuse that keeps the device out of the waste stream and gives it a second life.

What About Selling Old Meters

You might wonder whether you can sell an old glucose meter online. The short answer is that it is technically possible but rarely worth the effort, and there are regulatory gray areas. Glucose meters are classified as medical devices by the FDA, and resale of used medical devices occupies a murky legal space. Platforms like eBay and Amazon have policies restricting the sale of used medical devices, though enforcement is inconsistent. You are more likely to encounter trouble selling test strips than meters, since strip resale has been a particular enforcement target due to concerns about expired or improperly stored products being resold as new.

From a practical standpoint, glucose meters have very little resale value. Manufacturers frequently give new meters away for free or at heavily subsidized prices because the real revenue comes from the ongoing sale of proprietary test strips. Your old meter, which may be a generation or two behind current models, is worth less on the secondary market than the shipping cost to send it. Donation is almost always a better use of your time and the device.

When a Meter Is Truly Dead

If the meter no longer powers on, has a cracked screen, or has been recalled, reuse and donation are off the table. At that point your priorities simplify to safe and environmentally responsible disposal. Remove the battery and recycle it separately. Wipe down the exterior to remove any residual blood contamination. Check whether your local e-waste program accepts small medical electronics. If no dedicated channel exists, the cleaned, battery-free shell can go in household trash as a last resort.

For recalled meters, follow the specific instructions from the manufacturer or the FDA recall notice. Some recalls include a prepaid return label and ask you to send the device back for analysis. Do not donate or repurpose a recalled meter, even if it seems to work fine. The recall may involve accuracy issues that could lead to dangerous clinical decisions if someone relies on incorrect readings.

Keeping a Backup on Hand

Before you rush to get rid of an old meter, consider whether it makes sense to keep one as a backup. Technology failures happen, and if your current continuous glucose monitor loses signal or your primary meter malfunctions, having a secondary device at home can prevent a stressful scramble. Meters do not expire, though the test strips do, so keeping a meter with a small supply of fresh strips in a drawer or a travel kit is a low-cost insurance policy. People who travel frequently sometimes keep an older, simpler meter in their luggage as a failsafe, since a basic fingerstick meter requires no wireless connectivity, no smartphone app, and no charging cable.

If you do decide to keep one, store it in a cool, dry place with the battery removed to prevent corrosion. When you need it, pop in a fresh coin cell and a new strip, and you are good to go. This is one case where the most responsible thing to do with an old device is simply to hold onto it a while longer.