Starting Wednesday, 50 designated drugstores in Dalian, Liaoning province, will begin to take back expired medicines from local households, according to www.cteo.com.cn.

Local residents can receive partial refunds for the expired products or exchange them for other goods.

The city government will subsidize the drugstores which accept the expired medicines, which will be destroyed in bulk to prevent them being purchased by illegal traders and resold.

Dalian began an annual collection of expired medicines in 2005. More than 790 metric tons of expired products valued at 34 million yuan ($5.53 million) were recovered in the past nine years, with more than 250,000 local residents participating in the program.