Hand in used care items and medical devices at the Care Cycle

At Saskia's house, a few crutches were still gathering dust in the attic. The Vacoped - one of those sturdy, orthopaedic shoes you have to wear for a torn Achilles tendon - was also still there. Her husband needed it once, but had been walking around happily for a long time. During a big clean-up round, they thought: it's a shame to throw these things away, they could easily last another round. And so they discovered the Zorgkringloop, a place where you can give used care equipment a second life.

Hand in care aids at Zorgkringloop foundation

Those crutches and robotic shoe deserve a second life and so we brought our care items to thrift shop The location in Amsterdam-Noord (Distelweg location). There, they work together with Care Cycle Foundation, a foundation that gives used medical devices a second life. In the shop, usable items are given a place in the special care corner - at the back on the first floor - or they are collected and taken to Berghem. That is a village in North Brabant, where Stichting Zorgkringloop has a large storage and sales location. Here the items are sold for a small price, especially meant for people with a narrow purse.

After dropping in, we naturally went to lurk in De Lokatie's care corner - something we had never seen before in a thrift shop. For example, there was a tricycle for adults for 80 euros, while it costs at least a few hundred euros new. We also saw shelves full of new and unused medical aids: from incontinence pads to syringes, bandages and rollators. t Stichting Zorgkringloop welcomes many kinds of aids. What you can hand in, for example: crutches, walking frames, braces, incontinence materials, bandages and even tube-feeding or drinking food - as long as it is unopened and still usable. But not everything is allowed: things with a motor, needles and medicines are not accepted. Tip: By the way, you can dispose of medicines at the pharmacy, where they are disposed of safely via special waste streams. Or take them to the small chemical waste site. Never flush medicines down the sink or toilet!

And what if something doesn't sell at the Care Cycle? Stuff that is still on the shelves after a year, but still perfectly usable, goes on to Ukraine. There, too, they can put many of these tools to good use. This way, almost everything gets a nice second destination.

The Care Cycle in Amsterdam North can be found on the first floor in the back. De Zorgkringloop has several drop-off points in North Brabant.

More places to donate used healthcare equipment and medical devices

By the way, there are more ways to give used care items a good use. One of the best known is The Pharmacy of the Future, an initiative in which selected pharmacies collect unopened medical devices for reuse in healthcare. These include incontinence materials, dressings and diabetes products. The collected items are reissued via care institutions, GPs and distribution points to people who need them - for example, clients in home care or people without reimbursement from health insurance. Everything is done professionally and according to medical guidelines. You can also offer items yourself in special Facebook groups such as ‘Free medical supplies’, where supply and demand come together. And would you like to donate to Ukraine? Then chances are there is something near you. Online, there are countless large and small foundations that offer targeted collections. For instance helpforukraine.now, sputnik.nl or healthcare4ukraine.nl - all initiatives that know what is needed and how it gets there.

Please note that most regular thrift shops will not accept care items. So always check beforehand whether they work with them.

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Sources: waste separation guide.nl, pharmacy.nl, careforbetter.nl, danielshealth.com, Heart of the Netherlands.