Recycling In Emerging Economies: Practical Considerations for the Circular Economy in Fast-Growing Middle-income Cities and Countries

Dear Colleagues,

You are invited to contribute to a peer-reviewed Special Issue of the young but ambitious MDPI journal Resources, to be edited by Dr. Anne Scheinberg, under the working title: “Recycling In Emerging Economies: Practical Considerations for the Circular Economy in Fast-Growing Middle-income Cities and Countries”.

The goal of this Special Issue is to bring together action research, statistics, scholarly research in the social sciences, that look at the realities or re-use and recycling in middle-income countries. This is a working document, and so feel free to comment on structure for the journal special issue and the main themes for your contributions.

The search to create better numbers for solid waste and recycling—especially, to support better solid waste management practice in low- and middle-income countries—has a historical relation to the line of projects and initiatives that produced the ERM-World bank Strategic Planning Guide, the policy drivers insights, the GTZ Informal Sector Study, the ISWM framework and baseline approach, the metrics of the Habitat Book and its evolution to the WasteAware Indicators, and most recently, the GWMO.

The WasteAware Indicators are becoming a well-used and reliable way to benchmark solid waste progress cities, but their ability to deliver performance analysis of informal and formal valorisation, re-use, waste prevention, downcycling, and beneficial re-use, especially in emerging economies, has proved limited. Governments, after all, are the managers of solid waste systems (the service chain), as well as the main setters of recycling and resource management targets, or circular economy packages. However, in countries where dumping fees remain low, most informal and formal recycling takes place at the edges of the solid waste system, and fails to show up in normal solid waste statistics. The value chains which capture and trade recyclables are outside of the solid waste system, and seldom willing to share information with government.

This leads to the proposition, that it is time to pay the same attention to re-use, recycling, and related metrics that has led to better solid waste benchmarking. Some of the reasons include:

1. The growing importance of commitments to a Circular Economy approach to resource management, that raise the importance of and attention to recycling and other forms of recovery;
2. The gradual spread of the idea that integration of the informal sector is important as a practical approach to increasing recycling and the measurement of recycling performance in low- and middle-income countries,
3. The lack of appropriate metrics to evaluate effectiveness, efficiency, unit cost, and CO₂ impact of value chain recycling and organics management, and especially to compare the performance of value chain and municipal initiatives; and
4. The pressure on producers of products and packages to trace their products through the value chain and prove their levels of recycling. This is sometimes due to internal recycling targets, sometimes in response to externally imposed goals, and sometimes in response to legislative initiatives to ban certain materials (such as plastics), or to require extended producer responsibility organizations do manage the end of life of their packaging and/or electronic waste.

The thematic areas for the Special Issue are:

1. Comparative recycling metrics—in and between countries, states, provinces, companies, materials, trade associations, EPR systems, resource and industry ministries, and so forth.
2. Measuring and evaluating different types of private sector value chain recycling: what is in the waste stream and how is it being valorized when governments are not involved.
3. Economics, public policies, regulations, economic and financial incentives, technologies related to “municipal recycling” (defined as driven by or legislated by government) in high- middle- and low-income countries: EPR systems, municipal recycling, industry product stewardship: what works to divert waste from landfill, how is it measured, what are the results and what are the links between measurement systems, financing, results.
4. Recyclers and recycling institutions: census data, case studies and analyses of waste pickers, informal recyclers, private junk shops and traders, co-operatives and associations, and public sector recycling centers, MRFs, impex organizations
5. The EU circular economy package, EPR and 3-R policies, deposit systems, technology incubators, and a variety of others: want is the motivation and desired results, how do these policies and program function, are they conceptual or practical, what kind of metrics do they propose or demand, what kinds of institutions are being indicated to facilitate the circular economy transition, what does this mean for emerging economies in particular.
6. City case studies of informal and formal re-use and recycling in emerging economies (to follow a consistent but flexible framework and format provided by the editors):
   
   • BRICs + Turkey
   • Middle-income countries in South and East Asia and Pacific SIDS (Small Island Developing States)
   • Emerging economies in North and Southern Africa, Middle East, Emirates, and Indian Ocean SIDs (Mauritius, Seychelles, Maldives, etc.)
   • Latin America, Atlantic and Caribbean SIDS
   • Southern and Eastern Europe, Eurasia, former USSR

You can submit the following types of papers, as long as they fall clearly within one or more of the above-mentioned themes.

1. A traditional article on one of the above themes. Submit an abstract and ToC in advance please.
2. A review article. Review articles need to be proposed in advance with an abstract and ToC, since only one will be accepted, and the editors may suggest authors to combine efforts.
3. An edited-for-journal version of a PhD or MSc thesis or a project or consultant report or grey literature document, with full referencing. Send an abstract and a PDF of the document that is the basis.
4. Edited-for-journal versions of methodological, training, or guidance documents or manuals, with full referencing. Send an abstract and a pdf of the document that is the basis.
5. Short notes, or other forms that work with the themes indicated above. Send an abstract, proposal, or an early version.

Here are the suggested paper length:

Dr. Anne Scheinberg
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.