The Large-Scale Recalcitrant Hospital Waste Generation During COVID-19 Pandemic: Environmental Impacts and Sustainable Remediation Approaches

Plastics, a form of synthetic polymers have a major role to play in the healthcare sector. The recalcitrant nature of plastics has discouraged their use in several nations so as to maintain a sustainable ecosystem. However, the large-scale use of plastics in hospital equipment and other healthcare-related essentials cannot be ignored owing to their durability and sterility. The Covid-19 pandemic served as a major jolt to the global healthcare sector accounting for millions of infected cases and deaths. This led to an upsurge in the use of plastic polymer-based hospital equipment, personal protective gear (PPEs), and RT-PCR kits thus leading to an alarming increase in plastic-based waste in the environment. The disposal of these hospital-generated plastic wastes was a major concern and was mostly carried out through conventional methods mostly involving techniques like landfills, and incineration thereby leading to serious environmental pollution. This made the research groups to look for alternative and sustainable remediation methods for controlling plastic pollution. The chapter focuses on environmental contamination as a result of improper disposal of Covid-19-based hospital-generated plastic waste. It further discusses several conventional as well as sustainable technologies for the remediation of environmental pollution due to plastic waste along with the several challenges and opportunities associated therein. It further emphasizes biological remediation methods for establishing a sustainable environment. It also puts forward the microbial-based remediation strategy as a more efficient, economically feasible, and non-polluting technique as compared to others.