Table 1.

The merits and demerits of the main disposal methods of medical wastes.

Disposal methods	Advantages	Disadvantages
Incineration	Wide applicability, simple, mature, efficient technique, reduce the amount of waste largely	Toxic gas (especially dioxins, furans and mercury) release, produce ash with toxic metals
Landfill	Simple and mature technology, economical and convenient disposal method	Non-sustainability, risk of virus spread, large land occupation, poisonous gases emissions, dusts generation
Chemical disinfection	Small influence on the environment, broad sterilisation spectrum, high efficiency	High agent costs and equipment investment, produce toxic gases and liquids, residual disinfectants, cannot reduce the volume of medical wastes
Autoclaving	Well-established technology, good sterilisation, strong penetration	Produce toxic gases and liquids, cannot reduce the volume of medical wastes
Microwave disinfection	High efficiency, good sterilisation, low pollution	Huge capital investment, high running cost, reduce a small volume of medical wastes
Plasma	Reduce the volume of waste largely, good sterilisation	Huge capital investment and running cost, NOx generation
Pyrolysis	High efficiency and sustainability, high value-added products, broad applicability	High pre-treatment cost and energy consumption

Sources: Zamri et al. (2021); Ilyas et al. (2020); Wang et al. (2020b); Ma et al. (2019); Hong et al. (2018); Zroychikov et al. (2018).