Sustainable management and valorization of antibiotic waste

Global excessive antibiotic use has created widespread multi-drug resistance and increased antibiotic waste. Research mitigating antibiotic resistance is growing, but less attention has been shown towards sustainable antibiotic waste management. This review provides a comprehensive analysis of antibiotic waste management by incorporating environmental, economic, and societal sustainability practices compounded with innovative valorization techniques and machine learning tool. Findings established the importance of pre-treating antibiotic waste prior to disposal by adding pharmaceutical processing residues (PPRs) and antibiotic fermentation residues (AFRs) to value-added products like PPR derived biofuel, beta-lactam waste-based chlorhexidine GUMBOS, and AFR- & wastewater treatment plant (WWTP)-based biofertilizers and biochar, and also explored the trending topics of antibiotic waste valorization towards circular economy by machine learning technique. The transformation of antibiotic waste through various valorization techniques holds potential to address disposal issues by eliminating the entry of hazardous antibiotic compounds into the environment and simultaneously creating new value-added products. This contributes to environmental sustainability and generates employment opportunities. Current challenges to valorization techniques include improved sustainable and cleaner production technologies to add antibiotic waste value-added products to energy and agricultural sectors.