Challenges and measures during management of mounting biomedical waste in COVID-19 pandemic: an Indian approach

Abstract

The length of one's life is related to the amount of garbage produced. Waste is generated by a variety of activities such as households, industrial, agricultural, institutional, municipal, commercial, and so on (Vergara and Tchobanoglous 2012). In industrialized areas, the amount of waste generated is high, but the awareness about waste management is lacking (Ferronato and Torretta 2019).

Biomedical Waste (BMW) is defined as unwanted material left during the study, manufacture, or testing of human or animal diagnosis, treatment, immunization, or biologics. Bio-Medical Waste Management Rules 2016 classify the BMW into different categories such as human anatomical waste, animal waste, microbiological and bioengineering waste, sharp waste, cytotoxic waste, contaminated waste, solid waste (waste generated from single-use items other than sharp waste), liquid waste, incinerator ash and chemical waste (Datta et al. 2018, Rule 5 of Bio-medical Waste Management Rules, 2016 and 2018, 2019). Table 1 shows the sources of biomedical waste generation (Tiwari and Kadu 2013, Kalpana et al. 2016). Table 2 indicates the categories of biomedical waste.