UNASSIGNED: Improper disposal of unused medicine can impact the environment causing significant healthcare and financial burdens. While the medicine take-back programme is an effective management strategy, its effectiveness differs across countries. This study aimed to systematically review the take-back programmes in various countries and to identify areas needing improvement for programme enhancement.
UNASSIGNED: We conducted searches in Medline, EMBASE, CINAHL, Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar, from database inception to June 2023.
UNASSIGNED: The review included 27 studies spanning 15 countries\' medicine take-back programmes. While some programmes, mostly observed in the USA, were conducted at the local level with non-health-associated facilities, others were done at the national level within healthcare facilities. The cost of collected medicines ranged from US$7,416 to US$1,118,020, primarily involving medicines related to the nervous system, cardiovascular system, alimentary tract, and metabolism. Legislations pertaining to these programmes were available in the USA, most European countries, and Mexico, but unavailable in Spain, Austria, Australia, and New Zealand. However, despite this, the government or the industry in these countries managed the programmes.
UNASSIGNED: Well-structured take-back programmes featuring easily accessible collection points, regular collection schedules, clear programme ownership, with legislation defining financial responsibilities, showed positive outcomes.

With ever-improving social and medical awareness about menstrual hygiene in India, the demand for sanitary napkins has increased significantly. The utilization of high-quality and environment-friendly raw materials to produce these pads is further supporting the growth of the market. However, with improving demand and usage, the need for proper disposal techniques becomes more relevant, since all of these pads get contaminated with human blood which makes them a biohazard and can cause significant damage to human health and the environment. One sanitary pad takes around 800 years to degrade naturally and the plastic and super absorbent polymers (SAPs) in sanitary pads are non-biodegradable and can take multiple decades to degrade. Waste management technologies such as pyrolysis, gasification, and resource recovery can be adopted to manage tons of sanitary waste. Currently, sanitary waste treatment mainly focuses on landfilling, incineration, and composting, where biohazard wastes are mixed with tons of solid waste. Disposable sanitary pads have a high carbon footprint of about 5.3 kg CO2 equivalent every year. Innovative solutions for sanitary pad disposal are discussed in the manuscript which includes repurposing of derived waste cellulose and plastic fraction into value-added products. Future aspects of disinfection strategies and value addition to waste cellulose recovered from napkins were systematically discussed to promote a circular economy.

Waste masks pose a serious threat to the environment, including marine plastic pollution and soil pollution risks caused by landfills since the outbreak of COVID-19. Currently, numerous effective methods regarding disposal and resource utilization of waste masks have been reported, containing physical, thermochemical, and solvent-based technologies. As for physical technologies, the mechanical properties of the mask-based materials could be enhanced and the conductivity or antibacterial activity was endowed by adding natural fibers or inorganic nanoparticles. Regarding thermochemical technologies, catalytic pyrolysis could yield considerable hydrogen, which is an eco-friendly resource, and would mitigate the energy crisis. Noticeably, the solvent-based technology, as a more convenient and efficient method, was also considered in this paper. In this way, soaking the mask directly in a specific chemical reagent changes the original structure of polypropylene and obtains multi-functional materials. The solvent-based technology is promising in the future with the researches of sustainable and universally applicable reagents. This review could provide guidance for utilizing resources of waste masks and address the issues of plastic pollution.

With the burning issue of air, land and water pollution, the premonition of looking forward towards a future devoid of any kind of oil and gas reserves has caused a paradigm shift towards recycling, recovery of any synthetic polymer and also to dispose them off environmentally. Among them are plastics such as polyethylene terephthalate and poly vinyl chloride. Polyurethane (PU) is also under the scanner to dispose of or recycle it environmentally and sustainably. PU is at present the sixth most utilized polymer all over the world with a production of nearly 18 million tonnes per annum, which roughly estimates a daily production of PU products of greater than a million of cubic metres. Its thermostable nature is one of the major reasons for its higher preference over other polymers. This review article discusses the current disposal and technologies available to recycle waste PU foams and also sheds some light on some additional work being done in the field to upgrade the existing technology. Interestingly, some methods mentioned here are probably undergoing scale-up trials runs by now. Currently, the most researched and studied ones are mechanical recycling and glycolysis. But microbial and enzymatic disposal methods can be turned into full-scale industrial recycling processes in the near future. Additionally, we can see an archetypal shift from traditional oil-based sources to the agrarian sources.

Radioiodine capture and immobilization is not only important to consider during the operation of reactors (i.e., I-131), during nuclear accidents (i.e., I-131 and I-129) or nuclear fuel reprocessing (i.e., I-131 and I-129), but also during disposal of nuclear wastes (i.e., I-129). Most disposal plans for I-129-containing waste forms (including spent nuclear fuel) propose to store them in underground repositories. Here, iodine can be highly mobile and, given its radiotoxicity, needs to be carefully managed to minimize long-term environmental impacts arising from disposal. Typically, any process that has been used to capture iodine from reprocessing or in a reactor is not suitable for direct disposal, rather conversion into a wasteform for disposal is required. The objectives of these materials are to use either chemical immobilization or physical encapsulation to reduce the leaching of iodine by groundwaters. Some of the more recent ideas have been to design capture materials that better align with disposal concepts, making the industrial processing requirements easier. Research on iodine capture materials and wasteforms has been extensive. This review will act as both an update on the state of the research since the last time it was comprehensively summarized, and an evaluation of the industrial techniques required to create the proposed iodine wasteforms in terms of resulting material chemistry and applicability.

Medical waste status is a severe public health problem worldwide. Proper medical waste management is of paramount importance. However, there is insufficient information about medical waste management and lack of management in different countries. The aim of this research was to investigate and evaluate the present status of medical waste management in different countries. We systematically searched Embase, PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, PubMed Central, Google Scholar databases, as well as medRxiv using the following keywords: medical waste, waste management, disposal, healthcare per-capita generation, gross domestic product (GDP), and hospital. A total of 38 eligible articles were identified. Correlations were calculated between the amount of medical waste generated (kg bed.day-1) vs. GDP per capita ($) and ranking of healthcare system performance. A negative correlation was found between medical waste generation rate and ranking of healthcare system performance. According to the findings of this study, the medical waste generation rate in different countries ranged from 0.14 to 6.10 kg bed.day-1. About 25% of countries segregated medical waste, and about 17% used standard storage for all medical waste. Shortcomings were also found in waste collection, storage, transportation and transfer, and disposal of medical waste management activities in different countries. Only about 25% of countries simultaneously used three techniques, such as autoclaving, incineration, and landfill for disposal and treatment of medical waste, and 91% used incineration method. This study highlights an essential need for particular medical waste management guidelines and regulations, technologies, knowledge and financing to upgrade medical waste management worldwide. This study can be considered to be a good guide for further research on medical waste management in developing and developed countries.

Adsorption is the most widely adopted, effective, and reliable treatment process for the removal of inorganic and organic contaminants from wastewater. One of the major issues with the adsorption-treatment process for the removal of contaminants from wastewater streams is the recovery and sustainable management of spent adsorbents. This review focuses on the effectiveness of emerging adsorbents and how the spent adsorbents could be recovered, regenerated, and further managed through reuse or safe disposal. The critical analysis of both conventional and emerging adsorbents on organic and inorganic contaminants in wastewater systems are evaluated. The various recovery and regeneration techniques of spent adsorbents including magnetic separation, filtration, thermal desorption and decomposition, chemical desorption, supercritical fluid desorption, advanced oxidation process and microbial assisted adsorbent regeneration are discussed in detail. The current challenges for the recovery and regeneration of adsorbents and the methodologies used for solving those problems are covered. The spent adsorbents are managed through regeneration for reuse (such as soil amendment, capacitor, catalyst/catalyst support) or safe disposal involving incineration and landfilling. Sustainable management of spent adsorbents, including processes involved in the recovery and regeneration of adsorbents for reuse, is examined in the context of resource recovery and circular economy. Finally, the review ends with the current drawbacks in the recovery and management of the spent adsorbents and the future directions for the economic and environmental feasibility of the system for industrial-scale application.

Waste cooking oil (WCO) is a hazardous waste generated at staggering values globally. WCO disposal into various ecosystems, including soil and water, could result in severe environmental consequences. On the other hand, mismanagement of this hazardous waste could also be translated into the loss of resources given its energy content. Hence, finding cost-effective and eco-friendly alternative pathways for simultaneous management and valorization of WCO, such as conversion into biodiesel, has been widely sought. Due to its low toxicity, high biodegradability, renewability, and the possibility of direct use in diesel engines, biodiesel is a promising alternative to mineral diesel. However, the conventional homogeneous or heterogeneous catalysts used in the biodiesel production process, i.e., transesterification, are generally toxic and derived from non-renewable resources. Therefore, to boost the sustainability features of the process, the development of catalysts derived from renewable waste-oriented resources is of significant importance. In light of the above, the present work aims to review and critically discuss the hazardous WCO application for bioenergy production. Moreover, various waste-oriented catalysts used to valorize this waste are presented and discussed.

A huge amount of radioactive soil has been generated through decommissioning of nuclear facilities around the world. This review focuses on the difficulties and complexities associated with the remediation of radioactive soils at the site level; therefore, laboratory studies were excluded from this review. The problems faced while remediating radioactive soils using techniques based on strategies such as dry separation, soil washing, flotation separation, thermal desorption, electrokinetic remediation, and phytoremediation are discussed, along with appropriate examples. Various factors such as soil type, particle size, the fraction of fine particles, and radionuclide characteristics that strongly influence radioactive soil decontamination processes are highlighted. In this review, we also survey and compare the pool of available technologies currently being used for the remediation of radionuclide-contaminated soils, as well as the economic aspects of soil remediation using different techniques. This review demonstrates the importance of the integrated role of various factors in determining the effectiveness of the radioactive soil decontamination process.

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a global emergency crisis and created waste management challenges worldwide. Such a critical point has changed solid waste (municipal and medical) management prospects and posed fact challenges to the health decision-makers and policy-makers to make decisions to ensure sustainable management of the environment. One of the most negative prospects of COVID-19 pandemic is the increased waste generation, especially plastic waste in developing and developed countries. This study systematically reviews the potential influences of the COVID-19 pandemic on medical and municipal waste, and discusses the corresponding measures and policies of solid waste management in several countries. The results show that the highest and lowest quality of final disposal is observed in Finland with 75% recycling and in India with 90% open dumping, respectively. In many countries, the medical waste showed an increase by 350-500%.The pandemic has brought particular problems to the disposal capacity of municipal waste and medical waste across the world. We think that this point of view study provides valuable data for scientists, policy makers, health decision-makers, consultants, medical staff, medical supplies, those working in public health sector, and field engineers responsible for solid waste management.