The “strength” of painkillers.

Mine is.
I reckon I could burn a hole in my pillowcases some nights when I've eaten cheese, crisps, bread, sweets....

😂

Do you usually swallow the packaging too😂😂

Not to be recommended.

An aspirin the washing machine will clean up a wash spoiled by a tissue left in a pocket. They must clean our insides out too!

Your incident Annsixty shows how strong packaging is and makes you worry about its disposal.

There were collection points in some chemists for empty packs which were then recycled but I think they became overwhelmed and many stopped doing it.

Superdrug ran such a scheme but our local Superdrug doesn’t take part. The nearest Superdrug to me that does take part would entail a drive of over half an hour to get there and then to pay car parking charges and then a half an hour drive to get home, so unsurprisingly I put my strips in the bin.
However my local Boots take part in the collection of used inhalers which can then be recycled. I collect my used inhalers till I have a bag full and then take them into Boots.
If recycling is to be successful, then it must be accessible without undue travel and cost.

Terracycle had a short-lived UK scheme whereby one could claim a prepaid label to post 30 blister packs for recycling. The response they got was so overwhelming they had to stop it.

Hopefully this means they and others are researching ways to recycle more hard to recycle items without it costing a fortune in energy – by which I mean power to build and run the machines to do the work, as well as the resources needed to collect the stuff in the first place.