Industry focuses on recycling & recovery of industrial waste to address environmental crisis
Concerned over the increasing environmental degradation and climate crisis, the Indian pharmaceutical industry is focussing on recycling and resource recovery of its waste, said Masood Mallick, CEO, Re Sustainability.
Hospital sector has encountered an unprecedented surge in biomedical waste during the COVID pandemic which has not yet reduced. Across all healthcare centres, there was a 600-700 per cent increase in daily waste generation.
For pharma, the interest is the circular economy for recovery from industrial and commercial waste. Plastic, paper and chemicals waste are reduced or recycled.
Our first robotic enabled biomedical waste facility where the waste handling is being is being handled through a robotic waste picker is all ready and to be implemented soon early next month in Bengaluru.
Delving on the current biomedical water guidelines in India, Re Sustainability CEO said that while it is fairly complete yet there is a need to take precaution, even if there are no standards in the category of domestic hazardous waste, which includes medical waste generated at homes. There is definitely a need to update regulations and Re Sustainability, present across India and globally, would be recommending to the government for one common law across municipal, industry and biomedical waste.
Going by the pace of expansion plans, there is a need to partner with universities to start programs to develop human capital qualified and trained across all forms of waste management, recycling, resource recovery, energy recovery, sustainability disciplines.