Sustainability assessment of medicines reverse logistics in Brazil: Outcomes from the national and local systems

Viegas, Cláudia Viviane, Bond, Alan ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3809-5805, Teixeira Pontes, André, Korzenowski, André Luís, Bordin, Ronaldo, dos Santos Rosa, Roger, de Azevedo Coimbra, Masurquede and Bobek, Paulo Ricardo (2023) Sustainability assessment of medicines reverse logistics in Brazil: Outcomes from the national and local systems. Sustainability, 15 (20). ISSN 2071-1050

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Abstract

Brazil adopted a national medicines reverse logistic system (MRLS) in 2020 to properly discharge medicines for human use. Parallel to this, there are Brazilian municipal MRLSs that have been working since 2002 that facilitate the appropriate discharge or reuse of medicines. These systems are not linked with each other. This paper evaluates the national and the municipal Brazilian MRLS, and compares them regarding their principles, concepts, procedures, and (socio)economic outcomes using a modified sustainability assessment framework. It was found that shared responsibility is a principle of both MRLSs, but that local systems provide additional community benefits and lead to greater circularity in the use of medicines. Procedural aspects are highly formalized only in the national MRLS. The national MRLS collected and destroyed 52.7 tons of medicines in 2021 but did not disclose the costs. Estimations based on demographic data, information disclosed by one municipality, and secondary data from five other local systems indicate that the six municipalities could return around USD 123 million in 2021 to the benefit of the local population, if they spent USD 12.6 million on correct disposal. Such an estimate, however, is not fully trackable, and it exposes the lack of transparency and data collection at the local level.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Data Availability Statement: The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author. Funding information: This research was funded by The Brazilian National Council of Scientific Research and Development (CNPq), grant number 404.551/2021-1, Universal Call 18/2021.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	medicines reverse logistic systems (mrls),brazilian medicine returns,rls sustainability assessment,environmental science(all),medicine(all),sdg 3 - good health and well-being,2* ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/2300
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences University of East Anglia Research Groups/Centres > Theme - ClimateUEA
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Environmental Social Sciences
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	11 Oct 2023 01:17
Last Modified:	16 Oct 2023 00:40
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/93252
DOI:	10.3390/su152014675

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