Impact of Innovation on Waste Management

The inadequacies and inefficiencies of our current waste management system are causing difficulties and triggering an environmental crisis. As a result, regulatory stakeholder’s pressures and awareness of waste management have pushed firms to operate responsibly and to adopt innovation for preventing waste and achieving sustainable business performance. Literature highlights that green product, process, and managerial innovation has a potential to contribute to waste prevention. Therefore, this research attempts to examine the interrelationships between innovation and waste management through various ways. First, this research aims to examine the key topics interrelated with innovation and waste management, to understand how the internal and external factors contribute to the implementation of green innovation and its impact on waste prevention. Second, this research generates insights on the challenges that serve as major constraints to achieve sustainable waste management system. In this regard, lack of comprehensive corporate action, and ineffective government policies serve as major barriers to curb waste management. Third, the research identifies the priority areas concerning waste prevention to meet international standards of excellence and provides strategies for facilitating movement toward a circular economy. In this regard, the study shows restructuring of policies is required to instill individual, behavioral as well as institutional changes. This also highlights that assessing the environmental viability of existing techniques, improving the infrastructure by investing in circular technologies and incentivizing measures that encourage circularity and sustainable practices should be the key priority. In addition, public–private investments in research and infrastructure could also greatly help in bringing the changes.