Blockchain-based drug recycling: Mathematical model and developing operations strategy for third-party reverse logistics providers

Drug recycling is one of the issues that have recently been considered from various dimensions such as reducing environmental impacts, providing essential drugs, and developing a circular economy. In this regard, collecting the surplus drugs of citizens has become more important with the aim of recycling essential ones needed by patients and managing hazardous pharmaceutical wastes through reverse logistics. On the other hand, with reverse logistics management becoming more specialized, in order to focus more on their main activities and save costs, organizations are looking to hand over all or part of their activities to Third-Party Reverse Logistics Providers (3PRLP) and as a result, it has become a vital need for 3PRLPs to choose the appropriate operations strategy. In this research, with the aim of government-centered drug recycling management, the purchase and collection of citizens' surplus drugs has been assigned to 3PRLPs. Considering the three main beneficiaries, including the government, society and drug sellers and the goals of each, we have used the potential of the three tools of blockchain, cold chain logistics and cooperation among 3PRLPs to meet these goals and expectations, and have proposed an appropriate operations strategy for 3PRLPs. Based on the mathematical modeling of the research and the obtained objective function of 3PRLPs through the revenues received from the sale of the purchased drugs to the government, numerical results show that collaborative planning is better than non-cooperation, and on the other hand, the definition of the "drug essentiality" parameter will affect the final profit of 3PRLPs.