Circular Waste Management: Returning End-of-Life Products Back to the Economy

Dear Colleagues,

The waste generated in the entire world is rising both in its amount and its hazardousness, and the demand for raw materials is higher than ever. The scarcity of resources has led the industry to look to solid waste as the new source of materials. Integrated solid waste management has been helpful in establishing economies of scale and reaching processes efficiencies for the waste treatment processes working alone. Such a linear process, however, cannot adequately respond to the new challenges imposed by the circular economy approach and sustainable development goals set by the United Nations. Circular waste management, defined by Loher and Ward (1987), includes approaches such as recovery or reuse, being in line with the fundamental ecological principle that all materials should be returned to the cycle from which they were generated, with advantages to the potential reduction of cross-media transfer of contaminants. Circular waste management needs to be updated to be capable of meeting the current challenges: Making the use of products more efficient and bringing end-of-life products to the economy in a sustainable way. Understanding which should be the best way to promote circular waste management requires the application of systems analysis tools, such as life cycle assessment, cost–benefit analysis, multicriteria decision making, operation research methods, including reverse logistics, ecodesign tools, material flow analysis, just to name a few. It is therefore important to encourage a new paradigm of waste management, where the materials loops are closed and waste generated is minimized (together with its impact). This Special Issue intends to draw together the current progress in circular waste management with a sustainable background.

Loher, R.C., Ward, C.H. 1987. Waste treatment processes and cross-media transfer of pollutants. In: Multimedia Approaches to Pollution Control: A Symposium Proceedings. National Academy Press, Washington, pp. 8-23.

Dr. Ana Pires
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Resources is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Prevention of waste
• Reuse challenges
• Reverse logistics, end-of-life products collection, and waste collection
• Recycling challenges
• Policy instruments
• Circular economy and waste hierarchy principle
• Environmental impacts (including climate change, marine litter)
• Economic impacts
• Social impacts (including recycling behavior, consumption behavior)
• Waste streams case studies