Recycling the Irreversible: Chemical and Sustainable Approaches for Biomedical Waste Transformation

Biomedical waste represents one of the fastest-growing environmental challenges of the 21st century, exacerbated by rising healthcare demand and crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Traditional management strategies, including incineration, autoclaving, and deep burial, though effective in pathogen inactivation, are increasingly criticized for their environmental footprint, high operational costs, and risk of secondary pollution. To address these concerns, advanced treatments integrating chemical, thermal, and physicochemical approaches are being
actively explored. Chemical methods such as disinfection, alkaline hydrolysis, solvent-based recovery, catalytic depolymerization, and plasma pyrolysis provide targeted solutions for sterilization and material recovery. Similarly, thermal and physicochemical recycling technologies—including microwave irradiation, pyrolysis, gasification, supercritical water oxidation, and photocatalysis—enable both energy generation and detoxification of complex
biomedical residues. These innovations align with the principles of the circular economy, promoting waste-to-energy conversion, plastic-to-resin recycling, recovery of precious metals, and valorisation of organic fractions into compost and biogas. Collectively, these strategies not
only reduce.