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Resource Management and Circular Economy Sustainability

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Resources and Sustainable Utilization".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 22 November 2025 | Viewed by 3039

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS, Dresden, Germany
Interests: critical raw material recovery; circular economy; sustainability by design; waste valorization and management

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Guest Editor
Chemical Engineering Department, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)—Barcelona TECH, Campus Diagonal, Besòs, 08930 Barcelona, Spain
Interests: resource recovery; electrodialysis; ion exchange membranes; water and wastewater treatment; waste valorization; water purification
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The growth of the human population and the urgent need for a global sustainable transition to a greener energy grid system have led to an increase in the demand for raw materials. Furthermore, the production of waste due to this increase in the population and the need to satisfy the requirements of a technological society has grown considerably in recent years. The efficient management of both resources and waste has made it indispensable to achieve the sustainability goals required by a circular economy. Recycling is one way of reducing the demand for primary raw materials, but the increasing dilution of technological metals in consumer products has made the development of efficient and economic processes a major challenge. On the other hand, the continuous shortening of life cycles of different consumer products has increased the demand for these primary raw materials. This is why the development of approaches to obtain these resources from both primary and secondary sources is indispensable in order to meet current needs. To achieve this goal, the product must meet the highest quality standards and respect planetary boundaries in order to contribute to a sustainable circular economy.

This Special Issue focuses on providing different approaches for resource management, which contributes to a sustainable circular economy. Original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

  • Water resource management;
  • Resource and waste management;
  • Sustainability by design;
  • Process development for the recovery of critical raw materials.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Sandra Pavón
Dr. Tatiana Scarazzato
Guest Editors

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. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 2400 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.

Keywords

  • recycling
  • circular economy
  • sustainability
  • waste management
  • wastewater treatment
  • critical raw material recovery

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

28 pages, 966 KiB  
Article
A Multi-Criteria AHP Framework for Solar PV End-of-Life Management
by Wadhah Alzahmi and Malick Ndiaye
Sustainability 2025, 17(5), 1828; https://doi.org/10.3390/su17051828 - 21 Feb 2025
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1104
Abstract
The global growth of solar power has led to a significant increase in solar photovoltaics (PV) waste, which is expected to rise significantly in the coming years. The recommended end-of-life (EOL) management techniques for wasted PV panels include landfill disposal, recycling, or panel [...] Read more.
The global growth of solar power has led to a significant increase in solar photovoltaics (PV) waste, which is expected to rise significantly in the coming years. The recommended end-of-life (EOL) management techniques for wasted PV panels include landfill disposal, recycling, or panel reuse. However, a comprehensive decision-making strategy is necessary to assess the appropriate EOL plans from various perspectives, including economic, environmental, sociological, technological, regulatory, and business. This study aims to establish a comprehensive approach for examining disposition alternatives and suggest guidelines for PV EOL management. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used to prioritize disposition alternatives for solar PV waste, considering five key criteria: environmental impact, economic viability, social implications, policy and legislative compliance, and technical feasibility. The AHP Aggregating Individual Priorities (AIP) aggregation approach is used to analyze data using a pairwise comparisons matrix. The research indicates that recycling is the most preferred option based on the primary criteria, achieving the highest overall score compared to other alternatives. However, discrepancies were observed in the decisions among individual stakeholder groups and subfactor evaluations. To address these variations, this study provides policy recommendations to guide the sector in adopting optimal decision-making strategies for PV EOL management. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Resource Management and Circular Economy Sustainability)
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13 pages, 288 KiB  
Article
Resource Rents, Genuine Savings and Sustainable Development: Revisiting the Evidence
by José Jeremias Ganhane and Jesper Stage
Sustainability 2024, 16(15), 6535; https://doi.org/10.3390/su16156535 - 31 Jul 2024
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1302
Abstract
Economic theory on sustainable development suggests that resource-rich countries should reinvest the rents from natural resource extraction in other forms of capital to ensure that future consumption level of the economy can be greater than or at least equal to the level of [...] Read more.
Economic theory on sustainable development suggests that resource-rich countries should reinvest the rents from natural resource extraction in other forms of capital to ensure that future consumption level of the economy can be greater than or at least equal to the level of their current consumption. Several seminal papers in the early 2000s indicated that the correlation between genuine savings and future consumption was weaker than theory predicted, at least when genuine savings were measured using the World Bank estimates. This paper revisits the issue and replicates two of these earlier studies to see whether the correlation has become stronger over time, on the back of policy changes in resource-rich countries and of revisions to the World Bank estimates. The results indicate that the correlation between genuine savings and future consumption growth may be stronger for poorer countries than for richer, and for sub-Saharan Africa, the theoretical predictions appear to hold. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Resource Management and Circular Economy Sustainability)
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