Wastewater Treatment and the Use of Nanoparticles, a Form of Circular Economy in the Pharmaceutical Industry

People’s health is the most valuable “quality” they can acquire, and sometimes it depends or not on their actions. The pharmaceutical industry is often responsible for people’s health through the products it produces. However, the process of producing medicines can have significant effects on the environment. The good deeds of pharmaceutical companies also have consequences, and these ultimately end up being harmful to people as well. Based on the literature, this study aims to identify the possibility of implementing a circular economy at the level of the pharmaceutical industry, especially water consumption, which is perhaps the most exploited resource in pharmaceutical companies. The articles published between 2015 and 2024 from the Web of Science are used, which, with the VOSviewer software, are “transformed” into maps, thus representing the relationships between authors, the countries with the most publications, and the journals that published articles that address the research direction appropriate to the study. Also, methods for treating wastewater from the pharmaceutical industry have been identified, and it has been explained how drugs, more specifically antibiotics, can affect the environment and then humans and animals. In conclusion, the circular economy in the pharmaceutical industry is still a sufficiently unexplored topic to be applied with certainty, but it has potential, contributing to a reduction in environmental degradation caused by drug production. As research directions, the study can be expanded, the bibliographic analysis can be carried out in more detail, and even public data from companies operating in the pharmaceutical industry can be taken into account.