Consumer perceptions and actions related to circular fashion items: Perspectives of young Brazilians on circular economy.

The fashion industry is one of the most important industries for the world economy, but is also one of the most polluting. Some fashion companies have been adopting circular economy initiatives to combat this. Circular fashion (CF) results in cleaner production and reduces textile waste, but depends on consumer collaboration. Several studies analysing consumer CF issues worldwide have been recently published, but these studies are not common in emerging countries. This paper seeks to investigate the relationships between Brazilian consumers and CF. The methodology comprised a systematic literature review and survey. The main results show that, although young consumers are willing to change their clothing consumption habits and believe that fashion companies should be more sustainable, most of them never get involved in circular actions in the fashion chain. This paper seeks to fill a research gap on Brazilian CF, and contribute to both literature and the fashion industry in developing countries.

Healthcare waste management assessment: Challenges for hospitals in COVID-19 pandemic times.

With the spread of the new Coronavirus, there was an increase in the generation of contaminated waste. Thus, healthcare waste management (HCWM) became even a greater challenge in hospitals due to Coronavirus easily spread. In this context, it was necessary to create tools that could aid healthcare facilities in evaluating their HCWM. Therefore, the objective of this article was to elaborate a support tool that helps in identifying the shortcomings of hospitals' HCWM. For this purpose, the Health Service Waste Management Index was developed based on the selection of indicators in the area. The index was applied to six hospitals in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Its application meet the purpose of this research, since the results in the form of an index objectively summarize the reality of the HCWM in healthcare facilities. From the six hospitals investigated, four were classified as highly efficient. However, even though most of them were well evaluated, they still have difficulties with properly training their employees, which can be even a worse problem during a pandemic, when every precaution is extremely important to reduce the spread of the disease. Therefore, beyond this article contribution related to sustainability by demanding the hospitals to check which points of HCWM should be improved, it also adds academically by developing a tool with indicators that evaluate operational, human, economic and environmental factors in an innovative way.