Barriers to Green Practices in Health Care Waste Sector: An Indian Perspective

Health care service is now became a basic need for people irrespective of their age, gender and culture due to increasing pollution levels and changing lifestyles associated with rapid civilization. Health care units (HCUs) generate huge amount of waste, while rendering health care service to mankind. The management of health care waste is of great importance due to its infectious and hazardous nature that can cause undesirable effects on human health and the environment. Government regulations and growing public awareness regarding health care waste issues have forced health care units to adopt suitable strategies for managing this waste. Many efforts have been made by environmental regulatory agencies and waste generators to better manage the waste from healthcare facilities in recent years. In fact new technologies and instruments have been developed to handle health care wastes. However waste management practices in health care sector are not free from challenges. An attempt has been made in this study to identify potential barriers that hinder the greening effort of the health care waste sector in India. Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) has been used to model and analyze the identified barriers and their interdependencies.

[1]  Jonas Hansson,et al.  Managing commitment: increasing the odds for successful implementation of TQM, TPM or RCM , 2003 .

[2]  Gayathri V Patil,et al.  Biomedical solid waste management in an Indian hospital: a case study. , 2005, Waste management.

[3]  Saurabh Gupta,et al.  Rules and management of biomedical waste at Vivekananda Polyclinic: a case study. , 2009, Waste management.

[4]  Sushil,et al.  Scenario building: A critical study of energy conservation in the Indian cement industry , 1992 .

[5]  Zhang Yong,et al.  Medical waste management in China: a case study of Nanjing. , 2009, Waste management.

[6]  F Abdelmalek,et al.  Healthcare waste management in Algeria and Mostaganem department. , 2009, Waste management.

[7]  Kannan Govindan,et al.  An analysis of the drivers affecting the implementation of green supply chain management , 2011 .

[8]  J I Blenkharn,et al.  Lowering standards of clinical waste management: do the hazardous waste regulations conflict with the CDC's universal/standard precautions? , 2006, The Journal of hospital infection.

[9]  A V Shekdar,et al.  Health-care waste management in India. , 2001, Journal of environmental management.

[10]  Samwel Victor Manyele,et al.  Factors affecting medical waste management in low- level health facilities in Tanzania , 2010 .

[11]  Saurabh Gupta,et al.  Report: Biomedical waste management practices at Balrampur Hospital, Lucknow, India , 2006, Waste management & research : the journal of the International Solid Wastes and Public Cleansing Association, ISWA.

[12]  M. Helms,et al.  Performance measurement for green supply chain management , 2005 .

[13]  G. R Kassenga,et al.  A study on problems of management of medical solid wastes in Dar es Salaam and their remedial measures , 1997 .

[14]  S. Deshmukh,et al.  Vendor Selection Using Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) , 1994 .

[15]  Byeong-Kyu Lee,et al.  Alternatives for treatment and disposal cost reduction of regulated medical wastes. , 2004, Waste management.

[16]  R. Shankar,et al.  Productivity improvement of a computer hardware supply chain , 2005 .

[17]  Ziad A Memish,et al.  Effective medical waste management: it can be done. , 2003, American Journal of Infection Control.

[18]  T L Tudor,et al.  Healthcare waste management: a case study from the National Health Service in Cornwall, United Kingdom. , 2005, Waste management.

[19]  L. L. Eggerth,et al.  Characteristics of healthcare wastes. , 2008, Waste management.

[20]  Fayez Abdulla,et al.  Site investigation on medical waste management practices in northern Jordan. , 2008, Waste management.

[21]  Y. Cheng,et al.  Medical waste production at hospitals and associated factors , 2008, Waste Management.

[22]  M. S. Dinesh,et al.  Ecofriendly treatment of biomedical wastes using epigeic earthworms , 2010 .

[23]  K. Lai,et al.  Green supply chain management implications for "closing the loop" , 2008 .

[24]  P. Eagan,et al.  Solutions to health care waste: life-cycle thinking and "green" purchasing. , 2001, Environmental health perspectives.

[25]  Antti Pönkä,et al.  Recommendations for the Management of Wastes From Healthcare Facilities in Helsinki , 1996 .

[26]  Gerard P.J. Dijkema,et al.  A new paradigm for waste management , 2000 .

[27]  Skm Rao,et al.  Biomedical Waste Management : An Infrastructural Survey of Hospitals. , 2004, Medical journal, Armed Forces India.

[28]  Samir K. Srivastava,et al.  Green Supply-Chain Management: A State-of-the-Art Literature Review , 2007 .

[29]  R. Shankar,et al.  Modelling the barriers of green supply chain practices: an Indian perspective , 2010 .

[30]  A Prem Ananth,et al.  Healthcare waste management in Asia. , 2010, Waste management.

[31]  M. Hassan,et al.  Pattern of medical waste management: existing scenario in Dhaka City, Bangladesh , 2008, BMC public health.

[32]  Rafael Moure-Eraso,et al.  Analyses of the recycling potential of medical plastic wastes. , 2002, Waste management.

[33]  Md Sohrab Hossain,et al.  Clinical solid waste management practices and its impact on human health and environment--A review. , 2011, Waste management.

[34]  Ravi Shankar,et al.  Analysis of interaction among the barriers of Third Party Logistics , 2007 .