Environmental Science and Pollution Research (2021) 28:66485–66495

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-16904-w

SHORT RESEARCH AND DISCUSSION ARTICLE

Advances of waste management practices in India and China

along with bibliometric assessment of their research outcomes
Ashu Taneja1 · Ishwar Dutt1 · Arun Lal Srivastav1 

Received: 9 July 2021 / Accepted: 1 October 2021 / Published online: 14 October 2021
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2021

Abstract
This paper presents the progress made by India and China in the field of waste management and its disposal since l996 to
2020. To access it, bibliometric analysis has been carried out using SCOPUS linked SCImago electronic database. Different
bibliometric indicators such as documents, citable documents, external and self-citations, and external and self-citations
per document along with their annual corresponding growth (ACG) have been calculated in order to explore the progresses
made in both the countries. China has contributed 16.3% and India 4.3% to the total documents produced worldwide during
1996–2020 in waste management with the average ACG of 26.42% and 15.37%, respectively, during the same time span.
Also, the average ACG for self-citations of published research documents is more than that of external citations for both the
countries. In addition to that, the average self-citation magnitude reported for China (28,475) is more than that of India (5223),
whereas this trend reverses in the case of average external citation per document with values 16.9 and 28.94, respectively.
Moreover, the waste management practices being followed in both countries have also been compared and also presented so
that it could be beneficial for the country which is relatively not good in the same.

Keywords  Municipal solid waste management · Bibliometric evaluation · Total publication · Citable documents · Annual
corresponding growth · India and China

Introduction unscientific land-filling is a common practice in developing

Globally, solid waste management has become a hot topic
of discussion due to overpopulation, extensive urbanization,
and industrial expansions (Hazra and Goel 2009; Srivastav
and Kumar 2020) as these are having direct links with the
generation of major solid wastes. Tyagi et al. (2018) reported
that by year 2025, approximate generation of solid wastes
across the world would be > 2200 million tonnes in one cal-
endar year, and it will increase the synergistic problems of
the human health and environment as well. Accordingly,
air, water, and soil, all three environmental components, are
at the risk of severe contamination due to solid wastes mis-
management or open dumping (Al-Wabel et al. 2011; Sriv-
astav and Kumar 2020). For the management of solid waste,
Responsible Editor: Philippe Garrigues
* Arun Lal Srivastav
arun.srivastav@chitkarauniversity.edu.in
1
Chitkara University School of Engineering and Technology,
Chitkara University, Solan, Himachal Pradesh, India
nations which will increase the level of contaminations in
water (surface and groundwater) and neighboring soils too
(Gupta et al. 2015; Nagpure 2019). Therefore, academic
institutions and research organizations throughout the world
have been pushed to explore the possibility of new technolo-
gies for waste management, recycling, and recovery along
with extracting some value added products from so-called
waste materials. The population of India is > 1.3 billion
and ~ 70% population in India depends on the agriculture
(Agrawal 2015; Pujara et al. 2019). Since, land-filling is the
main approach of solid waste management in India, which
could lead the problems of global warming due to emis-
sions of methane after the decomposition of organic wastes
and groundwater contamination by leachate percolation
(Patil et al. 2017; Pujara et al. 2019). Since last few dec-
ades, different approaches have been developed for the waste
management including energy production techniques from
the municipal wastes, food wastes, etc. (Cheng et al. 2007;
Zhang and Jahng 2012). Big loopholes existed between the
approaches of solid waste management of developed versus
developing countries. For example, China is at the first place

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66486 Environmental Science and Pollution Research (2021) 28:66485–66495

in terms of population and relatively; there is lots of works have made efforts on the basis of SCImago electronic data-
to be done on the recycling, treatment, and management of base to compare their waste management policies through
solid wastes (Yuan et al. 2006). However, also developing bibliometric assessments. It has been observed that many
nations are trying to improve the situation in terms of waste improvements are required in the field of waste manage-
management as it can be seen in their research outcomes ment for both the countries, especially for India. Therefore,
(Yang et al. 2012). Indian policy-makers are suggested to take necessary steps
In order to prevent these problems of solid waste and for the effective waste management. Thus, the objective of
also for their better management, rigorous research is being this research paper is to access the growth of research out-
carried out across the world. Bibliometric studies can help put of India and China in the field of waste management
any nation to understand the requirement of funding and and disposal on the basis of data available on the SCImago
framing new policies in any particular area of science or electronic database. This study will help the policy-makers
technology. It will also make aware about the total publica- of both countries (including other countries) to adopt the
tion count, citations of research, international collaborative sustainable approaches of solid waste management in the
works, rank of a country in the continent/world in a par- near future.
ticular discipline, etc. (Srivastav et al. 2019; MacLeod and
Urquiola 2021). In this regard, an important bibliometric
evaluation of waste management practices and disposal has
Methodology
been carried out in the present study. Therefore, this study
is focused on the bibliometric assessment of the research
The present study is compiled on the basis of data available
publications of India and China in the subject of waste man-
on the official website of SCImago linked with SCOPUS
agement and disposal as it can give an exact overview of
through the link https://​www.​scima​gojr.​com (SCImago
the research activities being carried in the above discipline
2018). This database is freely available for analysis which
in both the countries. Moreover, bibliometric evaluation of
covers a wide variety of topics in different subject areas at
research publication could be a growth indicator of economy
world and country level.
and science of a nation (Meoand Al-Saadi 2007; Srivastav
To download the information, Environmental Science was
et al. 2019), because quantity and quality of a subject can be
selected out of 27 different main subjects available. Fur-
easily accessed by bibliometric studies of year-wise research
thermore, waste management and disposal (WMnD) was
production (Sweileh et al. 2018). Moreover, it also provides
selected as sub-field out of 12 different sub-fields. For this
ample information along with blueprint of growth (negative
paper, publications in journals, book series, conferences,
or positive) of a particular subject (Glynn et al. 2010; Li
proceedings, and trade journals from China and India were
et al. 2011). Wambu and Ho (2016) stated that such type of
collected and downloaded from the year 1996 to 2020. Fur-
studies could help the decision-makers of a nation to develop
thermore, the downloaded publications were mainly ana-
policy in the related discipline. Furthermore, it may also
lyzed on the bases of some important bibliometric indicators
be an indication of progression of research of a particular
like total published documents, citable documents, citations
subject or paper or journal or organization (Huang and Zhao,
(external/self), and citations (external/self) per document
2008). There are many types of bibliometric parameters
along with their ACG%. As evident from the literatures,
reported in the research such as publication by a country,
policy change and development in China is frequent as com-
discipline, title of the study, keywords, number of research
pared to India. Furthermore, funding to the research projects
institutions, universities, funding, and access of the papers
and international collaboration is also more in China than
(Yang et al. 2012; Srivastav et al. 2019). In Asia, research
India. Such types of information about both have been col-
outcomes of many nations are not comparable to the other
lected from the various reputed publication platforms like
developed nations due to lack of finance or low GDP, unem-
Elsevier, Google scholar, and Springer nature.
ployability, less resources required for research, etc. How-
ever, Japan, Turkey, Singapore, and South Korea are doing
exceptionally good in research because of good financial sta-
tus and will power. India and China are among the two fast- Results analysis
est growing countries of the Asian continent, and they are
also trying to improve their position in the research activities This section presents the results and findings of the biblio-
(Srivastav et al. 2019). India and China are among the fastest metric analysis carried out in relation to waste management
growing economies of the world. Furthermore, these are the and disposal (WMnD). To carry out this bibliometric study,
most populous countries of Asian region. However, many the data is taken from SCImago website from the year 1996
differences have been observed time to time in their edu- to 2020 of all the countries of the world. The worldwide
cation and research qualities. In the present paper, authors research scenario in waste management is evaluated through

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Environmental Science and Pollution Research (2021) 28:66485–66495
this study with special focus to most populated Asian coun-
tries, namely China and India.
Figure 1 presents the total number of published docu-
ments in the area of WMnD along with the number of cit-
able documents during 1996–2020. In this field, in total,
367,895 research documents are published at world level.
Out of these 367,895 documents, 360,583 articles have been
cited in one or other related research endeavors worldwide.
Taking the scenario of Asia in general and China and India
in particular, it can be seen that out of the total publications
of Asia (n = 114,599) in WMnD (1996–2020), the contri-
bution of China is 50.8% (n = 58,315) and that of India is
just 13.9% (n = 15,999). This deviation may be due to more
researcher’s density, financial support, research facilities,
and number of SCOPUS indexed journals. For example,
27.6%, publications are published in the top 10 journals
globally by Chinese researchers, while India’s contribution
is just 15.8% (Kuhad and Kumar 2020). Furthermore, China
spent 2.19% of its GDP in research and development (R&D)
Fig. 1  Total publications, World, Asia, China, and India during 1996
to 2020 in WMnD
Fig. 2  Total publications year-
wise at global level in WMnD
66487
in 2018, while India contributed just 0.69% in the same year
(World Bank 2021). In addition, Chinese researcher density
in year 2018 was 4,026 corresponding to 253 in the case of
India (Watal and Raghavan 2019). Along with that it may
be attributed to the largest population of China and its dis-
tinction of being Asia’s largest generator of municipal solid
waste (MSW) (Zhu et al. 2021).
The year-wise research data on published documents and
citable documents on WMnD globally is plotted in Fig. 2.
There is an exponential growth in the number of research
documents published as well as citable documents over the
years from 1996 to 2020. This trend is due to the rise in
world’s population and urbanization rate over the years.
Owing to rural–urban migration and changes in consumption
pattern, huge volumes of waste are generated, thus accelerat-
ing the research in this domain (Zhu et al. 2021).
The publication performance of top 20 countries in
WMnD is evaluated in terms of total research articles pro-
duced and total citable documents produced in Fig. 3 and
compared with the rest of the world (RoW). The USA has
published highest number of research articles (n = 60,082)
followed by China (n = 58,315) and India (n = 15,999) dur-
ing the same duration. There are a number of factors that
define the scientific publication performance of a country in
WMnD, for example, its population, area, per capita waste
generation, number of research organizations, number of
journals, and percentage of GDP invested in R&D (Khaju-
ria and Morioka 2008). The year-wise publication growth of
China and India is also depicted in inset view of Fig. 3. The
publication growth of these two countries is more or less
similar up to year 2008. After that, the deviation is drastic
suggesting exponential growth in the number of published
documents from 1996 to 2020. With n = 10,517 total pub-
lications in the year 2020, China has witnessed an increase
of 27.5% in total publications from the year 2019, while the
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66488
Fig. 3  Total publications coun-
try wise in WMnD from 1996 to
2020 along with that of China
and India year-wise (inset view)
growth scenario of India in 2020 shows 51.6% increase with
n = 2269 publications from the previous year. The research
output of any country also depends on the availability of
research facilities and resources, government policy and
plans to promote research initiatives, and effective means
or methods for international collaborations and technology
transfer (Panat 2014). China tops the world with maximum
number of researchers and stands at second position in fund-
ing research (Cao 2020), thus contributing to the accelerat-
ing research trend.
The external citations and self-citations of published
research documents in WM&D are plotted year-wise for
India and China in Fig. 4. For India, the external citations
Fig. 4  Citations (external/self)
of China and India in the disci-
pline of WMnD
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Environmental Science and Pollution Research (2021) 28:66485–66495
of published documents always lie above the self-citations
with a progressive increase over the years and a maximum
value of 30,866 external citations in the year 2009. After
this, the number of external citations tends to decrease till
2020, whereas China has more number of self-citations as
compared to the external citations. It achieved the maxi-
mum of 67,098 self-citations in the year 2018 followed by a
rapid fall till 2020.There are a number of factors that deter-
mine the number of citations for any research document, for
example, quality of work done in the corresponding research
area, interest level in the corresponding field, type of journal,
ranking of journal, and whether open access or not (Ber-
nius 2010). External citations are means to give credit to
Environmental Science and Pollution Research (2021) 28:66485–66495 66489

the researchers for their contribution in a particular research

area by someone with the similar research interest. It signi-
fies the impact of any researcher’s findings on the research
community. Costas et al. (2010) suggested that external cita-
tions magnitude is an effective evaluation tool to measure
the impact of any researcher’s findings and is devoid of any
kind of manipulation rather than self-citations which pro-
motes one’s own research document and its findings. How-
ever, relevant self-citations may be considered during the
evaluation. The magnitude of self-citations should not be the
criteria for quality of research output (Srivastav et. al. 2019).
Thus, it is inferred that China is more popular in the practice
of self-citations than India. Though it has a higher average
growth rate of research publications but with less external
citations than self-citations, it lags behind in producing qual-
ity research. Moreover, China extends less support for col- Fig. 6  The average ACG% in all bibliometric indicators in WMnD
laborative research endeavors (Zhao et al. 2021). discipline
The citations count per document is an important param-
eter to measure the publication performance of any country.
It is useful to study the impact of a research document in the End Value − First Value
ACG(%) = × 100 (1)
scientific community. Therefore, the research dynamics of First Value
China and India in terms of citations per document is evalu-
The research performance of China and India in WMnD
ated and presented in Fig. 5. For the year 2020, the external
is evaluated for each bibliometric indicator over last
citation per document in China is 2.13 and 1.93 in India,
25 years in Fig. 6. The average ACG in the total number
while the values of self-citations per document are 1.39 and
of research documents produced in WMnD by China is
0.74, respectively. The average citation per document is
26.42% and by India is 15.37%. For total citable docu-
observed as the ratio of external citations per document to
ments during 1996–2020, this value stands at 26.44% for
the self-citations per document. Thus, the magnitude of aver-
China and 15.2% for India. The average ACG in self-cita-
age citations per document for the year 2020 is 2.13/1.39,
tions and external citations of research documents pro-
that is, 1.53 in China, and 1.93/0.74, that is, 2.60 in India.
duced by China is more than ACG performance shown by
The average citation of any research document varies from
India for the same bibliometric indicators during the same
year to year, and this kind of change is termed as “citation
duration. Moreover, negative growth in external citations
dynamics” (Mori and Nakayama 2013).
per document (5.79%) and self-citations per document
In Fig.  6, the average annual corresponding growth
(ACG) percentage is calculated using Eq. (1).

Fig. 5  Citations per document

of China and India in WMnD
discipline

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◂Fig. 7  An integrated solid waste management framework (% compo-
sitions of wastes are adopted from Pujara et al. 2019)
(− 5.78%) is clearly visible for India, whereas China shows
a positive ACG with 10.53% and 12.84%, respectively.
Discussion
Waste management practices followed in India
Amid rapid urbanization, increase in population, industriali-
zation, and change in the lifestyle of people, it is expected
that the volume of the waste generated in urban India will
increase to 4,50,132 TPD by 2031 and 11,95,000 TPD by
2050 (CPCB, Annual Report, 2018–19). To accommodate
this huge amount of generated waste, there is an urgent need
for waste management to recover potential resource and
energy from waste. The Government of India has imposed
waste-to-energy (WtE) policy that aims to generate clean
and reliable energy with the treatment and processing of
waste through the adoption of environment friendly WtE
technologies. It has been reported that 1460 MW of energy
can be obtained from MSW (EAI 2019).
This section highlights the practices of managing the
municipal solid waste (MSW) that are followed in India.
MSW consists of biodegradable waste (50%), reusable
organic matter (20%), and inorganic materials (30%) (Plan-
ning Commission of India, 2014). It has been reported that
only 12–14% of MSW is treated in India, while the rest of
the waste is dumped in open and in landfills. The direct
disposal of waste in landfills without any prior treatment
poses severe environmental impacts such as emission of
toxic volatile organic compounds, greenhouse gases, and
contamination of soil and groundwater due to seepage
and rotten odors (Fernandez-Gonzalez et al. 2017; Patil
et al. 2017). The growth of pathogenic microbes in the
decomposed organic waste leads to infections and chronic
diseases to the waste collectors, rag pickers, and people
living nearby (Fan et al. 2018). Direct combustion of MSW
is another common practice followed in India, except in
few metro-cities which generates number of ­CO2 equiva-
lents (1 tonne of MSW generates ~ 1060 kg of ­CO2 equiv-
alents) (Botello-Alvareza et al. 2018; Rana et al. 2019;
Rathore et al. 2019). This has several health impacts such
as respiratory problems; irritation in the eyes, skin, and
nose; gastrointestinal problems; and allergies. A study has
been conducted by Jayakrishnan et al. (2013) to check the
health of waste workers associated with Kolkata Munici-
pal Corporation and Mumbai Municipal Corporation, and
the findings suggest that around 71% workers from Kol-
kata and 25% workers from Mumbai suffer from respira-
tory problems. Thus, the use of cleaner technologies for
66491
waste processing is essential to safeguard the interests of
task force involved and to promote the goal of sustainable
development.
The other waste processing techniques adopted in India
include composting, vermi-composting, refuse-derived
fuel (RDF), incineration, pyrolysis, biomethanation, recy-
cling, sanitary landfilling, waste-to-wealth, and waste-to-
energy (Singh 2020). There are many factors that decide
which technology is to be used, for example, quantity and
kind of waste, availability of funds and resources, capac-
ity of the Urban Local Bodies (ULBs), and availability of
land. Figure 7 gives a framework for MSW management
under integrated solid waste management which is nor-
mally being followed in India.
To put focus on sanitation and waste management,
the Government of India has launched Swachh Bharat
Mission-Urban (SBM-U). The Ministry of Housing and
Urban Affairs (MoHUA) has taken innovative measures
to accelerate the universal sanitation coverage and to sci-
entifically manage the MSW. The Swachh Survekshan is
one of the initiatives taken under SBM-U at MoHUA that
inculcates the spirit of healthy competition among the dif-
ferent Municipal Corporations (MCs) and ULBs on the
subject of cleanliness and sanitation. There are number of
useful measures taken under this program which aim to
strengthen the structure of waste management in India. As
an instance, the Greater Chennai Corporation has set up a
trading platform “Madras Waste Exchange” for MSW to
ensure that the recycled products are put to good use. It is
India’s first waste exchange for MSW. With this, Chennai
has become the first city to attain zero waste status, thus
bringing circular economy concept in waste management.
Another major success story under SBM-U is setting up
of a solid waste management plant in Chhattisgarh with a
capacity of managing 700 tons of waste per day. Another
initiative under SBM-U is taken by Jugsalai Nagar Pari-
shad, Jamshedpur, to convert waste tea leaves into nutri-
tional compost. This reduces the amount of garbage sent
to landfills, and organic matter is reused. Table 1 summa-
rizes the progress of the top performing states in Swachh
Survekshan, 2019.
Table 1 summarizes the performance of top position
holding states/UTs of India in Swachh Survekshan (2019).
Under SBM, a total of 84,475 wards are functioning across
India for the management of municipal solid waste. It is
clear from the table that all the wards in Madhya Pradesh,
Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Gujarat, and Delhi have achieved
100% door-to-door collection. In waste segregation,
Chhattisgarh excels with all the wards with 100% waste
segregation. In the end, the performance in terms of waste
processing capability suggests Chhattisgarh at the top with
90% and Delhi at the bottom with 54% waste processing
capability.
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Table 1  Performance of top position holding states/UTs of India in Swachh Survekshan (2019) (Data source: Singh 2020; Swach Survekshan
2019)
States/UTs Area ­(km2) Population Total wards Wards with 100% door- Wards with 100% Waste process-
(million) to-door collection source segregation ing capability
(%)

Madhya Pradesh 308,245 86 7115 7115 7005 87

Chhattisgarh 135,192 29.4 3217 3217 3217 90
Karnataka 191,791 68.4 6464 6464 3694 54
Gujarat 196,024 60.4 1427 1427 1187 87
Delhi 1484 19.0 294 294 59 55
Uttar Pradesh 243,286 231.5 12,007 11,872 8294 58
Maharashtra 307,713 123 7322 6590 6346 58

Waste management practices followed in China Furthermore, in China, development of fertilizers

At world level, the generation of MSW is increasing expo-
nentially due to overpopulation, economic growth, and
urban sprawling (Shareefdeen et al. 2015), and it can touch
3.4 × ­109 tons by the year 2050 as per the estimates of
the World Bank (Kaza et al. 2018). China is a fast grow-
ing economy along rapid growth of urban areas which are
also responsible for the generation of huge quantities of
the MSWs (i.e., ~ 10% of the world). China has started to
extract energy using incineration technology (102 MT/year
in 2018) through the treatment of MSW. From 2009 to 2018,
capacity of MSW of China has increased through various
practices such as incineration, landfill, and compost genera-
tion. Moreover, country has revised the law in 2020 for bet-
ter solid waste management which ensures the segregation,
categorization, and recycling of the waste materials (Ding
et al. 2021). Dumping in landfill is the main technique of
waste management in China (117 MT/year currently), and
more than 660 landfills were present across the China till
2018 (NBSC 2018). Furthermore, collection of the waste is
under top priority in different types of the bins along smart
waste segregation using recent technologies like IoT and
artificial intelligence. 52%, 45%, and 3% waste materials are
processed through, landfill, incineration, and composting,
respectively (Ding et al. 2021). However, Jin et al. (2021)
reported that in 2019, only food waste treatment provided
6520.98 × ­106 ­m3 methane which is equivalent to 7.97 MT
of coal. In China, waste’s incineration is encouraged to
reduce the landfill dumping, and hence, stringent policies
are being developed to safeguard the environment along with
appropriate management of the waste (Yin et al. 2021). Jin
et al. (2021) enlisted different types of policies formulated
in China for the effective management of waste materials
(Table 2).
From the above table, it can be seen that frequent changes
in the policies of waste management in China has become a
practice to save the environment and also protection to the
human health.
from the food wastes and animal feeds is included under
national policies on priority basis. Moreover, efforts are
under process to produce biodiesel from the food wastes
using larva of black soldier fly as can reduce the extra
burden on the biodiesel production from the crops (Li
et al. 2019). Similarly, being the largest hub of electronic
goods, China has taken many initiatives to manage the
e-wastes in the country. According to the policy, transloca-
tion, storage, use, and safe disposal of the e-wastes should
be ensured following green techniques and resource recov-
ery processes (Sun et al. 2021). Therefore, it can be seen
that a number of waste policies have been developed in
China to manage the waste according to their nature using
restrict laws. These processes are having direct links with
the development of new techniques through research activ-
ities with supported finance. These could be a reason of
huge growth in the research publication of China in every
field of the science including waste management. Col-
laboration between the research organizations, qualified
individual researchers, funding to the research proposals,
political support, etc. could also be the determining fac-
tors of quality research outcomes of a country (Brito and
Rodríguez-Navarro 2018; MacLeod and Urquiola 2021).
Undoubtedly, China is a leading country in the research
because of having flexibility in most of the factors cited
above to increase its growth as well as publication. Fur-
thermore, according to Pujara et al. (2019) and Srivas-
tav and Kumar (2020), in order to achieve effective waste
management, a country can accomplish (partially/com-
pletely) around 10 sustainable development goals (SDGs)
(for example, better health and well-being, clean water,
economical and industrial innovations, climate action, bio-
diversity conservation) suggested by the United Nations.
Therefore, it can be inferred that partially or completely
10 SDGs may be achieved after adequate management of
the waste materials.

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Table 2  Policy development in China over the years for waste management

Year Name of the policy

May 2000 MSW treatment and pollution prevention technology policy

June 2002 Notice on implementing MSW disposal charge system to promote the industrialization of waste disposal
October 2006 Reply letter on whether waste edible oils and fats produced in the catering industry belong to MSW
October 2007 Catering business operation code (SB/T 10,426–2007)
March 2010 Urgent notice on strictly preventing “waste oil” from flowing into the catering service
May 2010 Notice on organizing the pilot program for the utilization and safe disposal of food waste
July 2010 Opinions on strengthening waste oil remediation and food waste management
April 2011 Opinions on further strengthening the work of MSW treatment
May 2011 Special funds for the development of circular economy support the utilization of food waste and harm-
less treatment pilot city construction implementation plan
April 2012 12th Five-year Plan for National MSW Treatment Facilities Construction
December 2016 13th Five-year Plan for National MSW Treatment Facilities Construction
March 2017 Implementation scheme of MSW classification system
December 2018 Construction plan for “zero-waste pilot city”
January 2019 Regulations of Shanghai municipality on the management of MSW
November 2019 Regulations of Beijing municipality on the management of MSW

Source: Jin et al. 2021; Reprinted from Jin, C., Sun, S., Yang, D., Sheng, W., Ma, Y., He, W. and Li, G., 2021. Anaerobic digestion: An alterna-
tive resource treatment option for food waste in China. Science of The Total Environment, p.146397 with permission from Elsevier

Conclusion

The research progress made in the fastest growing coun-
tries of Asia continent, namely China and India, in the field
WMnD during last 25 years is discussed. In this regard,
bibliometric analysis using important parameters such as
documents, citable documents, external citations, self-cita-
tions, external citations per document, and self-citations per
document are studied in detail along with their ACG%. It
is observed that, in Asia, 50.8% of publications are from
China followed by India (13.9%) in the subject of WMnD.
The overall publication growth of World and China fol-
lowed exponential trend, whereas India showed some devia-
tions. Out of the top 20 countries presented, the USA is on
the top with 16.3% share followed by China (15.8%) and
India (4.3%) in the total worldwide publications in waste
management. After year 2008, count of external citations
is observed less in China in the comparison of self-citing
practices, whereas the same practice is found vice versa in
the case of India where external citations are more in prac-
tice. However, India is relatively lagging with China in the
policy change (as per the need of hour), effective imple-
mentation of the rules, providing funds, rank improvements
of the academic institutes, inappropriate leadership, lack of
environmental awareness, etc. Although China is also far
behind in the management of waste materials as compared to
the developed countries like Japan, Singapore, and Germany,
India has to do a lot of activities to ensure the sustainable
management of wastes and also to achieve environmental
sustainability along with human health protection.
Author contribution  AT: Ideation and drafting of the manuscript.
ID: Review and value addition.
ALS: Critical review and revision.
Data availability  The basic data of total publication along with their
citation dynamics considered in present study are freely available at
https://​www.​scima​gojr.​com.
Declarations 
Ethical approval  Not applicable.
Consent to participate  Not applicable.
Consent to publish  Not applicable.
Competing Interests  The authors declare that they do not have any
personal or financial conflict of interests.
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