"Incineration inevitably has an impact on the environment," Selma Benkhelifa of Progress Lawyers Network told CG about the U.S. government's previous plan to burn a cache of contraceptives instead of distributing them. "But the worst thing is depriving millions of women of access to contraception."
Before a reported $8 million worth of contraceptives purchased by U.S. taxpayers was rendered unusable, some American and European officials tried to leverage anti-waste measures to save them.
At a congressional hearing earlier this month concerning the State Department budget, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the House Appropriations Subcommittee that the federal government would not be distributing the huge supply of contraceptive pills, implants, injectables, and IUDs originally destined for global health programs and now believed to be sitting in Belgian warehouse facilities.
During the hearing, U.S. Rep. Grace Meng appeared to reference March reporting from the New York Times that only around $1.7 million of the initial $9.7 million stockpile may still be safe and effective to use after 20 truckloads of the taxpayer-funded commodities were improperly stored last year. Still, Meng pressed Rubio to address what would become of the medical products, some of which — albeit a fraction — may still be usable.
"Earlier this year, 66 of my colleagues and I sent you a letter … asking about the status of these supplies, but we never got an answer," Meng said, referring to a letter issued in January. "Secretary Rubio, what is the status of these birth control supplies?"
"We're operating under executive directive not to participate in these programs internationally," Rubio answered. He went on to say that the U.S. government "is not going to be involved in distributing contraceptives and all these other things around the world" because foreign aid "should be to advance the national interest of our country."
News that the State Department planned to destroy the medical products intended for use in global health programs in low- and middle-income countries first broke just about a year ago. This followed the dismantling of much of the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, and the freezing of foreign aid early in the second Trump administration.
Global health groups estimated that not making the contraceptives available could result in 362,000 unintended pregnancies, 161,000 unplanned births, 110,000 unsafe abortions, and over 700 preventable maternal deaths. Numerous health and humanitarian organizations attempted to purchase the products from the U.S. government but were declined. Instead, a plan emerged to incinerate them at a cost of around $170,000 to taxpayers.
Meanwhile, officials on both sides of the Atlantic attempted to prevent the loss through legal channels in part focused on reducing product waste, reducing financial waste, and promoting sustainability overall.
In the U.S., Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Brian Schatz introduced S.2252, or the Saving Lives and Taxpayer Dollars Act, in July 2025. "Specifically, the [bill] seeks to prevent the State Department's planned destruction of $9.7 million in family planning commodities instead of donating them to intended beneficiaries," according to a press release announcing the legislation. "It would also impose requirements to prevent the imminent spoilage of emergency food commodities in warehouses, including a USAID warehouse in Houston, Texas."
In this way, the bill could be seen as a new anti-waste law in the U.S. and a new tool for those promoting sustainability as a key to human, planetary, and budgetary health.
Later in July 2025, when reports emerged that the original stockpile might be transported from a warehouse in Belgium to France for burning, members of the French Green party wrote an open letter to Emmanuel Macron, urging the French president to prevent "the destruction of vital medical resources that could save lives" and "an intolerable waste of public health and money." Green party member Mélissa Camara also called on European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to review the legality of destroying the contraceptives, given the European Union's sustainability commitments.
After a false report in September that the stockpile had been incinerated in Northern Belgium, where local laws ban the destruction of viable medical goods, Flemish authorities confirmed that they had not been burned after all.
In October, legal experts published an op-ed in Le Monde outlining how the region's anti-waste regulations should be understood to protect the contraceptives.
"Under the European directive known as the Waste Framework Directive and its Flemish implementation — Materialendecreet — when a product is considered abandoned waste by its owner, in this case USAID and Chemonics, the holder, here Kuehne + Nagel [a transport and logistics company], has the legal obligation to manage and process it, to avoid any risk to human health or the environment," they wrote. "Since destruction is prohibited in Flanders for still-usable medicines, the only legal and compliant management would be to direct this stock toward humanitarian redistribution."
CG reached out to the co-authors of the op-ed in late 2025 for coverage of how laws in Belgium may have played a part in protecting the supplies from incineration and heard back from Selma Benkhelifa after our publication on that topic.
"The article [in Le Monde] was intended to alert public opinion," Benkhelifa, of Progress Lawyers Network in Brussels, told CG via email in December. "The formal notice was intended to warn the government that we were prepared to take the matter to court."
Various outlets highlighted efforts out of Belgium — including from officials — to try to save the stockpile. Still, the plan to incinerate the supplies rather than distribute them promised to roil not only reproductive health advocates but also environmentalists concerned about the waste and carbon emissions involved in burning so many functional medical items and, ostensibly, their packaging.
"Incineration inevitably has an impact on the environment," Benkhelifa said. "But the worst thing is depriving millions of women of access to contraception."
"In my view of popular ecology, the impact on vulnerable populations is inseparable from the impact on the environment," she said. "In other words, we can only accept an impact on the environment if it is to improve the lives of vulnerable populations. Never to worsen them."
While European regulations, advocacy, and diplomatic efforts may not have been able to save the bulk of the contraceptive stockpile — so much of it lost to a lack of refrigeration, according to the New York Times, in the course of transportation to an incineration facility before that plan was stopped in its tracks — some of the products may still be able to be used to improve well-being. These might even include shelf-stable elements of products otherwise compromised by improper storage, such as any syringes packaged to be used with injectable contraceptives, the Flemish minister of the environment previously remarked.
Now, news that the U.S. has been paying thousands of dollars each month for the storage of both viable and unviable products may renew pressure to distribute or sell them.
At the congressional hearing on June 2, Rep. Meng asked the Secretary of State, "How much have taxpayers spent to keep [the contraceptives] in warehouses instead of distributing them?"
Rubio said he did not know.
On June 10, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of USAID, in response to what it said was a bipartisan request from Sens. Shaheen and Lisa Murkowski, issued a report entitled "USAID Should Provide Final Disposition Instructions to Stop Accruing Storage Costs for $8 Million in Unusable Items and $1.7 Million in Nearly Expired Items in Belgium."
"We estimate that USAID has paid over $360,000 in storage and transportation costs for these commodities since January 2025 and will continue to incur monthly storage costs of over $24,000 under the now-terminated award until final disposition is complete," the report noted, advising that action be taken to mitigate the burden on taxpayers.
"Further, absent disposition instructions, commodities valued at $1.7 million may expire, and USAID risks paying additional costs due to a prolonged award closeout process," the report continued.
"At a time when every dollar invested in global health matters, and our teams across Africa are facing growing contraceptive shortages and stockouts, waste on this scale is simply unconscionable," Beth Schlachter told CG. Schlachter is the Senior Director of External Relations and Advocacy at MSI Reproductive Choices, one of the organizations that has tried to purchase the contraceptives from the U.S. government to prevent them from being destroyed or simply expiring.
According to reporting this week from The Hill, the $1.7 million worth of contraceptives thought to still be usable have expiration dates that "range from April 2028 to September 2031." That date range aligns with what Schlachter told CG, indicating that some of the supplies could still be saved and used, something organizations like hers are committed to helping happen.
Still, Nabeeha Kazi Hutchins, President and CEO of PAI, told CG that global health and advocacy groups like hers have somewhat limited information about the stockpile. "Our understanding of which commodities remain safe and effective for distribution is based entirely on public reporting and that is problematic," Kazi Hutchins said. "American taxpayers deserve more transparency than that."
Between the proposed legislation from Shaheen and Schatz, the congressional hearing this month, and now the OIG report, there could be enough pressure to motivate that transparency about what has happened to the millions of dollars worth of taxpayer-funded products — which may be used not only to prevent pregnancy but also to manage serious health conditions such as heavy menstrual bleeding.
While some public pressure may have faded since the story of the in-limbo stockpile first broke last summer, organizations like PAI are hoping to keep attention on what may still be done to prevent further waste.
"It doesn't have to be this way," PAI posted on social media after the recent congressional hearing. "The Saving Lives and Taxpayer Dollars Act would require the U.S. government to transfer viable reproductive health commodities to qualified partners before they're wasted or destroyed."
PAI encouraged Americans to call on their Congress members to support bill S.2252, which advanced out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this week and could continue through the legislative process to become law with enough political support. That may seem unlikely in the current climate in the U.S., but if anything is able to win the argument for those seeking to protect the medical supplies, it may be a rallying cry against waste of all kinds — of physical materials, of tax dollars — during a period of economic hardship for many Americans.
Meanwhile, if the legislation is not realized in time to save the remaining viable contraceptives, there is still the possibility that passing it could arm anti-waste and pro-sustainability advocates with a new tool to prevent the loss of other critical health supplies down the line.
Kirsten Krueger contributed to the editing of this article.
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