Towards a Blockchain, Smart Contract, and NFT Based Medical Waste Classification System: A Case Study in Vietnam.

Medical waste is classified as hazardous waste because most of it is discarded after six months of usage, and very little of it is capable of being reused. This statement is also proven during the Covid-19 epidemic when the ineffective treatment of medical waste is one of the direct causes of infections worldwide. For developing countries (i.e., Vietnam), the problem of waste treatment is a difficult problem to solve in a short time. Currently, the medical waste treatment process is a combination of medical staff - transport staff - waste treatment staff. Thus the wrongdoings in the first stage (i.e., waste sorting) seriously affect the last steps. Therefore, we propose a model of waste classification and treatment for Vietnam, applying Blockchain technology, smart contract, and NFT to raise individual/collective awareness of garbage classification in the medical environment. Specifically, our work contributes four-fold, (a) propose a blockchain-based mechanism for the classification and treatment of medical waste; (b) propose a model to create reward/punishment decisions for individuals/organizations; (c) implement the proposed model based on smart contracts; and (d) deploying proof-of-concept on 4 EVM &NFT-supported platforms (i.e., ERC721 and ERC20) including BNB Smart Chain, Fantom, Polygon, and Celo.