Healthcare waste management: a state-of-the-art literature review

Abstract

Enormous amount of waste generation is a critical issue across the world. This issue becomes more vital when various types of hazardous waste gets mixed up with general waste. One such hazardous waste is healthcare waste; this waste is generated in hospitals during different healthcare activities such as pathological diagnostic, surgery, etc. Therefore, to take an account on the issue of healthcare waste management the review of literature has been carried out on the basis of the classification given in Figure 1. This review article provides numerous future research directions including the requirement of more in-depth application of operations management tools and techniques. Additionally, the un-addressed issues related to a healthcare waste management i.e., inventory management, warehousing, bins allocation, routing and transportation, also needs attention for an effective management of healthcare waste.