Indicators of sustainable development for health care waste treatment industry

Abstract

Sustainable development is more and more considered as a key parameter and a driving strategy for sustainable performance. Today, numerous organizations develop their own performance indicators as no standard set of performance indicators could be generalized as meaningful in terms of sustainability performance. Particularly, the context of developing countries, where the concept of sustainability is not well diffused yet and where economic difficulties and constraints result most of the times in underestimation of environmental and social considerations, requires specifically adapted indicators. Specially, the sector of health care waste management lacks of sustainability indicators. This sector ensures the treatment, before disposal, of hazardous health care waste generated by health care centers (hospitals, clinics, and others). The evaluation system is designed for monitoring the pace of gaining sustainability within this sector. The objective of this article is to propose a sustainability evaluation system adapted to the needs and situation of developing countries, based on meaningful, practical, easily measurable and applicable indicators for the Infectious Health Care Waste (IHCW) Treatment sector.