Sustainability Assessment of Medicines Reverse Logistics in Brazil: Outcomes from the National and Local Systems

Cláudia Viviane Viegas (), Alan Bond, André Teixeira Pontes, André Luís Korzenowski, Ronaldo Bordin, Roger dos Santos Rosa, Masurquede de Azevedo Coimbra and Paulo Ricardo Bobek
Additional contact information
Cláudia Viviane Viegas: Management Graduation Program, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Washington Luiz Street, 855, Porto Alegre 90010-460, Brazil
Alan Bond: School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anlgia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK
André Teixeira Pontes: Management Graduation Program, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Washington Luiz Street, 855, Porto Alegre 90010-460, Brazil
André Luís Korzenowski: Industrial Engineering Graduation Program, Vale do Sinos University, Unisinos Av., 950, São Leopoldo 93022-750, Brazil
Ronaldo Bordin: Management Graduation Program, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Washington Luiz Street, 855, Porto Alegre 90010-460, Brazil
Roger dos Santos Rosa: Collective Health Graduation Program, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Ramiro Barcelos Street, 2600, 5th Floor, Porto Alegre 90035-003, Brazil
Masurquede de Azevedo Coimbra: Rio Grande do Sul State Government, State Health Secretary, Borges de Medeiros Street, 1501, 6th Floor, Porto Alegre 90020-020, Brazil
Paulo Ricardo Bobek: Rio Grande do Sul State Government, State Health Secretary, Borges de Medeiros Street, 1501, 6th Floor, Porto Alegre 90020-020, Brazil

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 20, 1-19

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.

Keywords: medicines reverse logistic systems (MRLS); Brazilian medicine returns; RLS sustainability assessment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/20/14675/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/20/14675/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:20:p:14675-:d:1256699

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().