International Journal of Environmental Science and Development

Abstract—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.

Index Terms—Health care waste (HCW), green supply chain management (GSCM), challenges to waste management, healthcare unit (HCU), interpretive structural modelling (ISM).

Authors are with School of Mechanical Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India (e-mail: kamalakanta@iitbbs.ac.in; akhilesh@iitbbs.ac.in).

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Cite: K. Muduli and A. Barve, "Barriers to Green Practices in Health Care Waste Sector: An Indian Perspective," International Journal of Environmental Science and Development vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 393-399, 2012.