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PurposeThe ongoing pandemic has gravely affected different facets of society and economic trades worldwide. During the outbreak, most manufacturing and service sectors were closed across the globe except for essential commodities such as food and medicines. Consequently, recent literature has focused on studying supply chain resilience and sustainability in different pandemic contexts. This study aims to add to the existing literature by exploring the economic, environmental and societal aspects affecting the food supply chain and assessing the impact of COVID-19 on food sustainability.Design/methodology/approachA survey method has been adopted with a questionnaire instrument investigating the role of technology, government policies, geopolitics and intermediaries on sustainable organisational management. A five-point Likert scale (i.e. 1 = strongly disagree;5 = strongly agree) is used to evaluate the responses. The findings are based on 131 responses from entry-level workers and senior executives of different food supply chains across Asia and Europe. The data has been analysed to derive insights into the impacts of this pandemic.FindingsThe survey concludes with the significant impact of COVID-19 on the three pillars of sustainability, i.e. economic, social and environmental dimensions. The empirical analysis shows digitalisation and its applications help mitigate the negative effect of COVID-19 on sustainability. In addition, the supportive government policies and intermediatory interventions were helpful in improving sustainability at each level.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings have implications for businesses and policymakers. Companies can learn from the advantages of digitalisation to counter the challenges imposed by the pandemic or similar situations in the future in maintaining the sustainability of their supply chains. Managers can also learn the importance of effective organisational management in driving sustainability. Finally, policymakers can devise policies to support businesses in adopting sustainable practices in their supply chains.Originality/valueThis study adds to the limited literature exploring the impact of COVID-19 on food supply chain sustainability through the triple bottom line lens. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is also one of the first empirical studies to examine the effect of technology, government and organisational management practices on the sustainability of food supply chains.
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As part of the City of Atlanta's Department of Watershed Management (DWM) transition into a 5-year rolling Capital Improvement Program (CIP), the Atlanta Program Management Services Team (PMST) was tasked with developing the Atlanta Integrated Water Resources Plan (IWRP) to incorporate project recommendations from the City's three recently completed master plans for water, wastewater, and stormwater into an integrated CIP. This effort was especially difficult as the City's available budget for CIP projects was being significantly reduced from normal years because of the adverse revenue impacts associated with the coronavirus pandemic and the uncertain economic recovery forecasts for the 5-year rolling CIP time frame. This paper details the successful development of an optimization model designed to maximize triple bottom line (TBL) and risk reduction benefits from the universe of potential water, wastewater, and stormwater projects while meeting tight financial budget limitations. The optimization model was based on OptimizerTM software by Optimatics that uses a heuristic learning algorithm, which is an approach designed to solve multi-criteria problems in a faster and more efficient manner that favors speed of process over absolute accuracy or completeness. The model used in Atlanta was the 3-dimensional (3-D) version to accumulate as much triple bottom line per dollar (TBL/$) and risk reduction per dollar (RRB/$) as early as possible in the planning horizon while minimizing budget expenditures. Copyright © 2022 Water Environment Federation.
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This paper analyzes the environmental dimension and the SDGs in the management of public relations in triple bottom line businesses in the context of Covidl9. For this purpose, we have conducted an exploratory-descriptive research through a questionnaire to 79 companies classified as triple bottom line companies or companies in transition towards more sustainable models from 27 countries. The results show that while most of the participants identify the environment as a stakeholder and consider the environmental dimension as very important for the management of their communication;only few companies consider the SDGs among the three most relevant issues related to sustainable development. From these data, we infer that although triple bottom line businesses are working to generate environmental value, in many cases they are not adequately identifying and communicating to their stakeholders. © 2023 Universidad Complutense de Madrid. All rights reserved.
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PurposeThe purpose of this study is to propose a framework comprising supply chain (SC) resilience strategies to handle low-frequency high impact disruptive events. This study also evaluates the impact of SC resilience strategies' implementation on the triple bottom line of SC sustainability.Design/methodology/approachA hybrid three-phased method is proposed to meet the research objectives of this study. In the first phase, this study uses the Delphi technique to select SC resilience strategies and SC sustainability dimensions. In the second phase, the best–worst method is used to assess the relative weights of resilience strategies. Finally, in the third stage, summative Likert scoring is used to understand the impact of SC resilience strategies on the SC sustainability triple bottom line.FindingsThe outcomes reveal that firms give due importance to inter-organizational relationships and supplier nearness for supply continuity. In the sustainability context, the obtained scores proved that resilience strategies have the maximum impact on economic sustainability, followed by environmental sustainability.Research limitations/implicationsTo the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that examines aspects of SC resilience strategies and quantifies their impact on the triple bottom line of SC sustainability. This study is specific to the automobile sector;sectoral diversity may expose similarities and dissimilarities in the approach.Practical implicationsThe outcome establishes that supplier–manufacturer relationships need to be strengthened further to tackle any future uncertainties. Besides, supplier location decisions may also be revisited. The strategies proposed will aid SC managers to make informed decisions to prepare for uncertain events.Originality/valueIn the face of uncertain events, often SCs trade-off sustainability in pursuit of resilience. It manifests that resilience is a prerequisite for SC sustainability. While planning SCs, organizations often choose either sustainability or resilience. Thus, this study acknowledges the need to develop effective SC resilience strategies that are in harmony with the sustainability agenda.
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This research aims to identify and analyse the challenges faced by the energy–power supply chain (LNG Power) in Pakistan a developing economy from combined perspectives of supply chain sustainability and resilience in the context of the Triple Bottom Line framework, UN SDGs 7, 13 and energy security. The significance of this research increases many folds as energy-power supply chains have been severely disrupted by events such as COVID-19, the Russia–Ukraine war and massive devastation caused by floods in Pakistan. Pakistan meets more than 60% of its energy-power needs from natural gas (including LNG), being less harmful than coal and oil power generation. The industry is in a state of deep crisis as it faces a complex set of challenges. Exploratory research design using a mixed method case study approach was used for the identification and shortlisting of challenges. Later these were ranked using group BWM. Major challenges were lack of strategy, top management commitment, weak compliance to UN SDGs, stalled structural reforms, disasters, lack of supply chain orientation, risk management culture, financial instability, LNG non-availability, demand uncertainty, infrastructure inadequacies and lack of awareness of Industry 4.0. The research enables policy-making besides providing energy practitioners a roadmap to overcome these challenges. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
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Supplier selection is regarded as the primary goal of supply chain management (SCM) because it affects its performance, productivity, pleasure, flexibility, and system speed in lockdown. A new method is proposed based on a multi-stage fuzzy sustainable supplier index (FSSI). Experts can use the triple bottom line (TBL) criteria to select the best supplier. In addition, the worst method is proposed based on trapezoidal membership and fuzzy membership functions, which can cover uncertainties and ambiguous environments. Because it collects the related criteria and sub-criteria and uses a direct fuzzy methodology, this research has impacted the SCM literature because it helps solve previous expert methods' computational difficulties. In addition, an ordered mean integration representation method has been implemented to prioritize the selection of the best supplier (SS) based on the sustainability performance of the best supplier, which improves the selection accuracy compared to the previous ranking method. This study can be used as a benchmark to determine which supplier is the best in sustainability. To provide the superiority and broad applicability of the proposed model, a practical case study was completed. On the other hand, the COVID-19 pandemic harms productivity, company performance, and selecting the best suppliers based on sustainability performance. The lockdown situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic hurts company performance and management.
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COVID-19 , Decision Making , Humans , Pandemics , Communicable Disease Control , UncertaintyABSTRACT
The introduction of new information technologies has started reshaping global industrial sectors and supply chains. Due to the introduction of the Internet of Things (IoT) real-time management strategies have been adopted by the global logistics industry, turning the branch into an intelligent service supplier. This paper assesses the influence of IoT on the Chinese logistics sector and related environmental performance between 2011 and 2018. This paper establishes an evaluation framework for the logistics performance under social, economic and environmental dimensions by using time entropy weighting. Using a grey correlation approach, we identify a strong positive correlation between the logistics performance and the IoT market scale. We further find a significant and increasing correlation trend for an expansion of the IoT market and the reduction of carbon and PM 2.5 intensity. The environmental regulation though positively correlated with logistics sustainability, shows less potential to directly improve economic and social performance. It also indirectly promotes sustainability performance of the logistics industry through support for technological innovation. High investment in IoT is estimated to limit the potential of small and medium-sized enterprises to increase their labor compensation and expand the scale of employment. Finally, we project China's IoT market developments for 2021–2025 using a grey forecasting model considering the influence of investment confidence and COVID-19. The results indicate that China's share of the global IoT market will likely rise from 18% to 30% by 2025.
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This paper aims to understand the current research scenario through published studies on corporate sustainability, emphasizing the environmental approach. Methodologically, this research develops a systematic literature review based on papers published in the Web of Science database in the last ten years. As a result, there was an upward evolution of research on the searched topic, with one hundred fifteen publications in the last three years compared to one hundred six documents published in the previous seven years. It is also observed that studies published at the beginning of the time frame between 2011 and 2020 were more concerned with the adoption of corporate sustainability, while the most recent research focuses on new approaches and methodologies for its implementation. And, with regard to its implementation, one of the main barriers is the incorrect perception of senior managers that the results from corporate sustainability must be more linked to the economic than to the environmental and social spheres. As relevant aspects, this study observed that new technologies, currently led by the 5th generation mobile network (5G) and Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0), can contribute to the insertion of corporate sustainability in the industrial context. It also noted that, despite being recent, COVID-19 was considered by several researchers as an event to be considered in terms of corporate sustainability.
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The recent Covid-19 pandemic has drastically changed the higher education landscape and its future of achieving sustainability. There has been a surge in enrolment in online courses, and people have expressed greater enthusiasm for online-only options. While a few studies have looked at the impact of online and distance education on sustainability elements, little attention has been paid to the criteria of distance education that are economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable. This study considers the question of "How does online and distance education relate to sustainability?" and attempts to identify the criteria of online and distance education that are related to sustainability. Based on the Triple Bottom Line approach, this study employed a qualitative method by engaging several selected experts in Malaysia in a series of focus group discussions. The results extracted nine, seven, and fifteen criteria for online and distance education that can be categorized into the economic, environmental, and social pillars of sustainability, respectively. Social sustainability seemed to be the most prominent pillar in online and distance education. Future studies may further expand the applicability and operationally of the newly developed framework.
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Purpose The ongoing pandemic has gravely affected different facets of society and economic trades worldwide. During the outbreak, most manufacturing and service sectors were closed across the globe except for essential commodities such as food and medicines. Consequently, recent literature has focused on studying supply chain resilience and sustainability in different pandemic contexts. This study aims to add to the existing literature by exploring the economic, environmental and societal aspects affecting the food supply chain and assessing the impact of COVID-19 on food sustainability. Design/methodology/approach A survey method has been adopted with a questionnaire instrument investigating the role of technology, government policies, geopolitics and intermediaries on sustainable organisational management. A five-point Likert scale (i.e. 1 = strongly disagree;5 = strongly agree) is used to evaluate the responses. The findings are based on 131 responses from entry-level workers and senior executives of different food supply chains across Asia and Europe. The data has been analysed to derive insights into the impacts of this pandemic. Findings The survey concludes with the significant impact of COVID-19 on the three pillars of sustainability, i.e. economic, social and environmental dimensions. The empirical analysis shows digitalisation and its applications help mitigate the negative effect of COVID-19 on sustainability. In addition, the supportive government policies and intermediatory interventions were helpful in improving sustainability at each level. Research limitations/implications The findings have implications for businesses and policymakers. Companies can learn from the advantages of digitalisation to counter the challenges imposed by the pandemic or similar situations in the future in maintaining the sustainability of their supply chains. Managers can also learn the importance of effective organisational management in driving sustainability. Finally, policymakers can devise policies to support businesses in adopting sustainable practices in their supply chains. Originality/value This study adds to the limited literature exploring the impact of COVID-19 on food supply chain sustainability through the triple bottom line lens. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is also one of the first empirical studies to examine the effect of technology, government and organisational management practices on the sustainability of food supply chains.
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The coronavirus(COVID-19)pandemic disruption adversely impacted the Supply Chain for Natural Gas(NG) retailing, jeopardizing committed targets for thesocio-economic transition toa gas-based economyleading to inclusive growth in India. Furthermore, Omicron'srapid spread is a cause of global concern. This research aims to develop a conceptual Supply Chain Performance (SCP) measurement methodology for reducing recovery time post exogenous disruption. Exploratory research involving an integrative literature review identifies different approaches, frameworks, models, and techniques for Supply Chain PerformanceMeasurement(SCPM). Analysis reveals that the application of DMAIC improves the reliability of Supply Chain Management (SCM) functional processes during disruption recovery while synthesizing the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) with Triple Bottom Line(TBL) accounting approach provides a rigorous robust method to represents financial, social, and environmental performance goals. Accordingly, findings present a methodology with nine systematic steps to evaluate performance by City Gas Distribution(CGD)entities to accelerate NG retail consumption and speed up network expansion to meetthe growing clean energy demand of the urban populace. Additionally, anIndian model for transition to a gas-based economy is also presentedto distinguish competing goals to harmonize growth with environmental sustainability and ecological modernization. Though SCP is a mature concept, the literature on its methodology during disruption recovery for NG retailing is scanty. Hence, the proposed action-oriented SCPM methodology has practical implications for improving SCP, contributing uniquely to the retail SCM domain for NG. Its application will instigate industry practitioners to review Supply Chain Management (SCM) processes and strategies to improve service effectiveness and delivery efficiency.
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Everything about our life is complex. It should not be so. New approaches to governance are needed to tackle these complexities and the rising global challenges. Smartization of cities and societies has the potential to unite us, humans, on a sustainable future for us through its focus on the triple bottom line (TBL) – social, environmental, and economic sustainability. Data-driven analytics are at the heart of this smartization. This study provides a case study on sustainable participatory governance using a data-driven parameter discovery for planning online, in-class, and blended learning in Saudi Arabia evidenced during the COVID-19 pandemic. For this purpose, we developed a software tool comprising a complete machine learning pipeline and used a dataset comprising around 2 million tweets in the Arabic language collected during a period of over 14 months (October 2020 to December 2021). We discovered fourteen governance parameters grouped into four governance macro parameters. These discovered parameters by the tool demonstrate the possibility and benefits of our sustainable participatory planning and governance approach, allowing the discovery and grasp of important dimensions of the education sector in Saudi Arabia, the complexity of the policy, the procedural and practical issues in continuing learning during the pandemic, the factors that have contributed to the success of teaching and learning during the pandemic times, both its transition to online learning and its return to in-class learning, the challenges public and government have faced related to learning during the pandemic times, and the new opportunities for social, economical, and environmental benefits that can be drawn out of the situation created by the pandemic. The parameters and information learned through the tool can allow governments to have a participatory approach to governance and improve their policies, procedures, and practices, perpetually through public and stakeholder feedback. The data-driven parameter discovery approach we propose is generic and can be applied to the governance of any sector. The specific case study is used to elaborate on the proposed approach. Copyright © 2022 Alswedani, Mehmood and Katib.
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Purpose>The present research aims to analyse the retailer's commitment to sustainable development (RCSD) perceived by the consumers and how it contributes to store equity creation through image, perceived quality and loyalty.Design/methodology/approach>A primary research was conducted through a structured questionnaire to analyse the relationships between the variables included in the proposed model. The fieldwork was conducted in 2019, obtaining responses from 617 retail consumers from four cities in Ecuador – Quito, Guayaquil, Cuenca and Machala – obtained. A structural equation model is estimated with the partial least squares technique.Findings>There is evidence in favour of the contribution of sustainability to store equity. The positive influence of RCSD on perceived quality and the impact of the latter, together with store image, contribute to loyalty, which emerges as a critical construct in building store equity.Research limitations/implications>Some limitations of the present study – geographic scope limited to Ecuador, analyses restricted to food retailers and pre-COVID-19 data collection – may open new research opportunities replicating the study in other regions for other retail activities and in the post pandemic context.Practical implications>The retailer's actions demonstrate a commitment to economic, social and environmental sustainability. As a result of this, the establishment's perceived quality improves, which is of interest to academics and retail management professionals.Originality/value>The present research provides evidence on the chain of effects that explains the positive contribution of RCSD to store equity creation in grocery retailing.
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This paper investigates the relationship between sustainability and financial performance using a sample of G7 firms from 2004 to 2020. We find a positive bidirectional relationship that firms with better sustainability performance are more profitable in the future and firms with better financial performance have higher subsequent sustainability performance. In addition, we test how two major crises (the financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic) affect the sustainability-financial performance relationship. Firms with better sustainability performance are hit harder on their financial performance, but the benefits of financial performance on sustainability are strengthened during the financial crisis. During the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, firms with strong sustainability performance have been more resilient, and their financial performance has dropped less than firms with poor sustainability performance. However, the benefits of profitability on sustainability are weakened. Our results suggest that sustainability provides “insurance”-like protection against economic downturns during COVID-19 and mature sustainability offers economic benefits but not early-stage sustainability. It expands the contingency perspective of sustainability–financial performance relationship to crisis management. © 2022 ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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The ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to emerge across all facets of the world of work, including the field of human resource management (HRM). Sustainable HRM, drawing on the triple bottom line elements of the economic, environmental and social pillars of sustainability, provides an ideal basis from which to understand the intersection of the COVID-19 pandemic and HRM. In this systematic literature review, we analyze peer reviewed articles published in the nexus of the pandemic and sustainable HRM, identifying the dimensions and extent of research in this topical area of study. Our CEDEL model—complicator–exposer–disruptor–enabler–legitimizer—conceptualizes our understanding of the role of COVID-19 in sustainable HRM. This paper provides a framework from which future studies can benefit when investigating the impacts of COVID-19, and a comprehensive identification of future research avenues.
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Outdoor air pollution is a complex system that is responsible for the deaths of millions of people annually, yet the integration of interdisciplinary data necessary to assess air quality's multiple metrics is still lacking. This case study integrates atmospheric indicators (concentrations of criteria pollutants including particulate matter and gaseous pollutants), traffic indicators (permanent traffic monitoring station data), and social indicators (community responses in Twitter archives) representing the interplay of the three critical pillars of the United Nations' Triple Bottom Line: environment, economy, and society. During the watershed moment of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns in Florida, urban centers demonstrated the gaps and opportunities for understanding the relationships, through correlations rather than causations, between urban air quality, traffic emissions, and public perceptions. The relationship between the perception and the traffic variables were strongly correlated, however no correlation was observed between the perception and actual air quality indicators, except for NO2. These observations might consequently infer that traffic serves as people's proxy for air quality, regardless of actual air quality, suggesting that social media messaging around asthma may be a way to monitor traffic patterns in areas where no infrastructure currently exists or is prohibited to build. It also indicates that people are less likely to be reliable sensors to accurately measure air quality due to bias in their observations of traffic volume and/or confirmation biases in broader social discourse. Results presented herein are of significance in demonstrating the capacity for interdisciplinary studies to consider the predictive capacities of social media and air pollution, its use as both lever and indicator of public support for air quality legislation and clean-air transitions, and its ability to overcome limitations of surface monitoring stations.
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Air Pollutants , Air Pollution , COVID-19 , Social Media , Air Pollutants/analysis , Air Pollution/analysis , Communicable Disease Control , Environmental Monitoring/methods , Humans , Pandemics , Particulate Matter/analysisABSTRACT
In the past ten years, sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) attach great importance due to consumers, for-profit and profitless organizations, laws and regulations to the social and corporate responsibilities of consumers, so it has been recognized by practitioners and scholars. Supplier selection, environmental effect like a lockdown, and social cooperation and other SSCM programs can play an important part in realizing the triple bottom line (TBL) of economic, environmental, social assistances. In supply chain management (SCM), the sustainable supplier selection (SSS) and firm performance plays an important role. Traditionally, when evaluating SSS performance, organizations will consider a new framework to obtain the overall criteria/sub-criteria of the sustainability index by encapsulating sustainability. In this paper 12 sub-criteria for 3 pillars of sustainability as economic, environment and social performance is collected. Although there are many articles on SSS and evaluation, so far, research on sustainability issues is very limited. This study endeavours to propose a fuzzy multi-criteria approach to discuss SSCM planning, and studies the issue of determining a current model for SSS in the supply chain during COVID-19 based on the TBL method. For express the linguistic value of the subjective preference of experts we use triangular fuzzy numbers. By using fuzzy numbers to find standard weights for qualitative performance evaluation, then fuzzy TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) is proposed to find the ranking of SSS. However, COVID-19 has a negative role in SSS and in firm performance. The situation of lockdown due to COVID-19 has a negative effect on the performance of the organizations. An example is given of the proposed method. © 2022, Politechnika Lubelska. All rights reserved.
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Over the years, sustainable supplier selection (SSS) has become increasingly popular among scholars and practitioners as a viable means to actualize supply chain sustainability. Little, however, is known about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on sustainable supplier selection particularly in the manufacturing sector. In this paper, we present pandemic response strategies as a significant aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic's impact and investigate the relative importance of such strategies in SSS implementation. Drawing upon a rich data pool from the Nigerian manufacturing sector, we proposed an integrated multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methodology to analyse the interrelationships between the COVID-19 pandemic response strategies and Triple-Bottom-Line (TBL) criteria for SSS. Our analysis shows that economic criteria and pandemic response strategies are the highest ranked in terms of relative importance and thereby pinpoints the need for manufacturing firms to emphasize such during SSS implementation in the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, quality, cost, use of personal protective equipment and use of information technologies for customer demand prediction are inferred as highly significant in SSS implementation in the COVID-19 pandemic era. Furthermore, the efficiency of the proposed methodology was validated by a comparative analysis with other MCDM methods. Therefore, this study presents implications on the significance of pandemic response strategies in SSS and thereby enriches literature on the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on supply chains.
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Today's societies are connected to a level that has never been seen before. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the vulnerabilities of such an unprecedently connected world. As of 19 November 2020, over 56 million people have been infected with nearly 1.35 million deaths, and the numbers are growing. The state-of-the-art social media analytics for COVID-19-related studies to understand the various phenomena happening in our environment are limited and require many more studies. This paper proposes a software tool comprising a collection of unsupervised Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) machine learning and other methods for the analysis of Twitter data in Arabic with the aim to detect government pandemic measures and public concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic. The tool is described in detail, including its architecture, five software components, and algorithms. Using the tool, we collect a dataset comprising 14 million tweets from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) for the period 1 February 2020 to 1 June 2020. We detect 15 government pandemic measures and public concerns and six macro-concerns (economic sustainability, social sustainability, etc.), and formulate their information-structural, temporal, and spatio-temporal relationships. For example, we are able to detect the timewise progression of events from the public discussions on COVID-19 cases in mid-March to the first curfew on 22 March, financial loan incentives on 22 March, the increased quarantine discussions during March-April, the discussions on the reduced mobility levels from 24 March onwards, the blood donation shortfall late March onwards, the government's 9 billion SAR (Saudi Riyal) salary incentives on 3 April, lifting the ban on five daily prayers in mosques on 26 May, and finally the return to normal government measures on 29 May 2020. These findings show the effectiveness of the Twitter media in detecting important events, government measures, public concerns, and other information in both time and space with no earlier knowledge about them.
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COVID-19 , Communicable Disease Control , Government , Pandemics , Social Media , Humans , Machine Learning , Saudi ArabiaABSTRACT
In recent years, municipal authorities especially in the developing nations are battling to select the best health care waste (HCW) disposal technique for the effective treatment of the medical wastes during and post COVID-19 era. As evaluation of various disposal alternatives of HCW and selection of the best technique requires considering various tangible and intangible criteria, this can be framed as multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem. In this paper, we propose an assessment framework for the selection of the best HCW disposal technique based on socio-technical and triple bottom line perspectives. We have identified 10 criteria on which the best HCW disposal techniques to be selected based on extant literature review. Next, we use Fuzzy VIKOR method to evaluate 9 HCW disposal alternatives. The effectiveness of the proposed framework has been demonstrated with a real-life case study in Indian context. To check the robustness of the proposed methodology, we have compared the results obtained with Fuzzy TOPSIS (Technique of Order Preference Similarity to the Ideal Solution). The results help the municipal authorities to establish a methodical approach to choose the best HCW disposal techniques. Our findings indicate that incineration is the best waste disposal technique among the available alternatives. Even if the dataset indicates 'incineration' is the best method, we must not forget about the environmental concerns arising from this method. In COVID time, incineration may be the best method as indicated by the data analysis, but "COVID" should not be an excuse for causing "Environmental Pollution".