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The purpose of this paper is to explore the sustainability of waste supply chains regarding the energy efficiency of first-mile waste collection systems and quality of waste. Roles of actors in the waste service triad are considered, particularly focusing on households.

Primary data are collected from respondents including municipality officers, waste service providers (WSPs) and households through brainstorming sessions, semi-structured interviews, site visits and a focus group. Secondary data are collected from official reports for validation.

Findings reveal tension between the energy efficiency of waste collection logistics and the quality of waste collected. Households are co-producers of logistic services providing important inputs in the form of sorting and moving waste and raw materials into new cycles of goods circulating in logistics systems. Other actors in the logistics service triad are the municipality as regulator and the WSP acting as a reverse-logistics service provider.

This study provides principles for policymakers and practitioners to evaluate the energy efficiency of waste management options, considering the quality of waste. Also, “logistics services” and “quality of waste” as concepts might provoke new thoughts on how to involve the consumer in resource recovery.

Few studies have focused on the end-consumer’s role in waste supply chains. By considering waste as a resource and the consumer as the supplier of this input, this study provides a new way to think about logistics services for waste collection.

The purpose of this paper is to determine how best to reduce, reuse and dispose of household waste medicines in the National Health Service (NHS) (UK).

Through a combination of literature review and empirical work, this research investigates the existing household waste medicines reverse logistics (RL) system and makes recommendations for improvement by benchmarking it against household waste batteries RL. The viability and feasibility of these recommendations are evaluated through in-depth interviews with healthcare professionals and end user surveys.

The batteries RL system appears to be a more structured and effective system with more active engagement from actors/stakeholders in instigating RL practices and for this very reason is an excellent comparator for waste medicines RL practices. Appropriate best practices are recommended to be incorporated into the waste medicines RL system, including recapturing product value, revised processing approaches, system cooperation and enforcement, drivers and motivations and system design and facilitation.

This study offers academics and professionals an improved insight into the current household waste medicines RL system and provides a step towards reducing an existing gap in this under-researched area. A limitation is that only a small sample of healthcare professionals were involved in subjectively evaluating the feasibility of the recommendations, so the applicability of the recommendations needs to be tested in a wider context and the cost effectiveness of implementing the recommendations needs to be analysed.

Reducing, reusing and properly disposing of waste medicines contribute to economic sustainability, environmental protection and personal and community safety. The information retrieved from analysing returned medicines can be used to inform prescribing practice so as to reduce unnecessary medicine waste and meet the medicine optimisation agenda.

This paper advocates learning from best practices in batteries RL to improve the waste medicines RL design and execution and supports the current NHS agenda on medicine waste reduction (DoH, 2012). The recommendations made in the paper not only aim to reduce medicine waste but also to use medicines effectively, placing the emphasis on improving health outcomes.

India has taken a successful step towards meeting Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) by providing access to basic amenities such as safe drinking water, waste management, drainage systems and bio-compost pits in households. The purpose of this study is to identify factors that significantly impact access to such basic amenities in villages in two states in the hilly regions of India.

Village-level secondary data collected from the Unnat Bharat Abhiyan (UBA) website has been analyzed using multiple linear regression and non-parametric statistical tests. Socio-economic and demographic variables are the independent factors in regression whereas availability of basic amenities is the dependent variable.

Findings reveal that in Himachal Pradesh, gender ratio, annual income per family, percentage of BPL households, percentage of pucca houses, and percentage of village population above graduation, significantly impact access to piped water in village households. Also, literacy rate and percentage of population with education above graduation significantly impact availability of compost pits. Further, in Uttarakhand, percentage of pucca houses influences access to waste collection system and availability of compost pits. Availability of drainage systems is influenced by literacy rate. A comparison between the two hilly states reveals that Himachal Pradesh is better off in terms of ease of access to drinking water whereas Uttarakhand is ahead in terms of other amenities.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no other studies have used socio-economic and demographic variables to study access to basic amenities in villages in hilly states in India.

Service modularity promotes efficiency at the provider end of the supply chain and customisation at the customer end. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how logistics service modularity contributes to sustainable development through the means of energy efficiency. This is analysed in the context of logistics services for household waste collection.

A single case study methodology with embedded units is adopted where semi-structured interviews were conducted with a waste service provider (WSP) and buyers (municipalities) in Sweden, focussing on five types of logistics services for waste collection: collection of food and residual waste at apartments and one-family houses, as well as collection of gardening waste. Service modules are identified and analysed by blueprinting the service.

The findings show different service modules – standardised or customised – and their contribution to sustainable development operationalised through energy efficiency. Principles for an energy-centric service design are proposed.

The research is limited to Swedish household waste collection setting. Promising efficiency through standardisation, logistics service modularity has a potential to improve energy efficiency as well. This neglected link between sustainability and service modularity offers fruitful research avenues.

This research is of practical relevance to waste logistics service providers and the municipality by suggesting principles for energy-centric service design. The service blueprint enables using logistics service modularity for improving energy efficiency in different logistics service settings.

This research incorporates an environmentally sustainable development perspective into logistics service modularity and contributes to the literature by exploring how energy efficiency is improved by modular design of logistics services. Furthermore, the study is one of the first to use service blueprinting to analyse logistics service modularity, providing a methodological contribution to that field in general and logistics in particular.

This paper examines how accounting concepts were utilised in domestic waste collection services in Ireland over the past two decades or so. In comparison to other former “free” services in the Irish context, the prevalence of accounting concepts has been greater and delivered a more successful outcome.

Drawing on the concepts of calculation, the “economic” and economization, events around domestic waste policy in Ireland are examined, and the increasing prevalence of concepts such as price, cost and profitability in these processes are a focal point. Publicly available documents such as government policy documents, parliamentary records and media reports are utilised to draw out these concepts. The period of analysis is 1996–2018.

The findings reveal the role of accounting concepts in the economization of domestic waste policy in Ireland. The result of the economization process was a fully privatised, profit-oriented, price-monitored system.

This research provides a broad view of accounting concepts in the management of domestic waste. It highlights how waste policy in Ireland travelled through instances of being political and economic over time. The research is limited by its use of secondary data.

This study highlights how accounting concepts were used in varying ways to bring about a satisfactory solution to domestic waste disposal in Ireland, namely the privatisation of waste services.

This paper analyzes the cost structure of the municipal waste collection in Japan. Since the municipality in Japan is responsible for dealing with the garbage generated by households, there is plenty of data regarding municipal waste in comparrison to private firms. Nevertheless, there is little research available which analyzes the end-of-life product logistics of municipal waste. This research aims to reveal some structural features of the end-of-life product logistics cycle. Based on more than 1,800 samples, this paper statistically shows that both waste collection and waste processing have a strong scale economy. In addition, this paper will also prove that the consignment to the private entity has made the cost of waste management cheaper in Japan.

This study examines whether or not the waste management practices of the poor households living in squatters and low‐cost flats in Kuala Lumpur are conducive to the environment. With the aim of accomplishing the above, the study empirically assesses knowledge, attitude and behaviour of the urban poor concerning their household solid waste management. With primary data collected from the level of living condition and waste management practices of the urban poor, the study employed a multiplicity of statistical techniques such as t‐tests of equality of means, one‐way analysis of variance, chi‐square ‘likelihood ratio’ tests, and descriptive statistics. The findings of the study provide evidence to the effect that poverty does not cause environmental degradation as the knowledge, attitude, and behaviour of the urban poor concerning solid waste management are found to have been conducive to the environment. The study suggests that the problems of poverty and environment need to be seen differently as the causal relationship between the two does actually depend on the level of socioeconomic profile and the type of environmental practices of a particular group of community

To achieve proper waste management, the disposal of electronic waste (e-waste) is one suitable method. Most developing countries, including Malaysia, are facing lack of e-waste recycling facilities and low household participation. Using a survey method using a questionnaire, this study aims to examine the intention of Malaysian households to drop-off their mobile phones to the nearest collection boxes (n = 600).

This study expanded the theory of planned behavior by adding environmental awareness and knowledge. In addition, the cost of disposal and the convenience of the available disposal infrastructure were measured as two parts of the perceived behavioral control.

The results of this study show that environmental knowledge and awareness have a significant impact on attitudes toward recycling intention of the households. In addition, it was also found that the attitude and cost of disposal infrastructure is positively related to household intention.

These results show that if e-waste collection boxes are provided to the nearest community and e-waste management information is distributed, this will increase household participation in e-waste management.

Several waste bin sanitation initiatives have been introduced in Ghana to address the surge in indiscriminate solid waste disposal in households. What is not known are the behavior factors that determine the acceptability and use of waste bins. This study aimed to identify the determinants of waste bin acceptability and use in Ghana using the theory of planned behavior (TPB).

Data on waste bin acceptability and usage were collected from 881 households in the Volta and Oti regions of Ghana. The data were analyzed using the partial least squares-structural equation modeling technique in SmartPLS 3 software.

The coefficient of determination (R-squared value) of the original TPB and the extended model explained 39.9 and 44.7% of the variance in waste bin acceptability and use intentions, respectively. The results revealed that attitudes (ß = 0.114, t = 3.322, p < 0.001), subjective norms (ß = 0.306, t = 6.979, p < 0.001) and perceived moral obligation (ß = 0.352, t = 8.062, p < 0.001) significantly predicted household waste bin acceptability and use behavior intentions, but perceived behavioral control (ß = −0.003, t = 0.064, p < 0.949) did not influence behavior intentions significantly.

The study provides valuable insights into the behavioral factors to be prioritized by waste management service providers to improve household waste bin acceptability and usage.

This is one of Ghana's first studies investigating the behavioral determinants of waste bin acceptability and usage.

Of great concern today is how to collect and recycle post‐consumer waste efficiently. Reports the results of a study of 47 collection schemes for household waste which examined their logistical characteristics. An extensive literature review revealed that much recycling research suffers from a lack of theory. Discusses why and how logistics theory can contribute to the understanding of what is happening in reverse distribution channels. Suggests a number of propositions on relationships between logistical characteristics and performance. Of particular interest is whether separation of waste is to take place at the source by the consumer or in a central processing facility. Suggests that postponing separation to a separation facility can enhance performance by reducing cost and increasing service.