Critical Reviews on Sustainable Materials, Circularity, and Low-Carbon Products

Dear Colleagues,

This special issue brings together the latest high-impact review papers addressing recent advances, emerging trends, and critical challenges in the field of sustainable materials and products. As sustainability becomes a central pillar in materials science and engineering, comprehensive and integrative reviews are essential to guide research, innovation, and industrial implementation.

The scope of this special issue focuses on sustainable material systems, including bio-based and biodegradable polymers, recyclable materials, green composites, functional nanomaterials, and low-carbon alternatives. Emphasis is placed on environmentally responsible material design, life cycle assessment, circular economy strategies, and scalable manufacturing processes.

The purpose of this special issue is to provide comprehensive, critical, and integrative reviews that synthesize fragmented research across chemistry, materials science, environmental and architectural engineering, and applied physics. Review articles are welcome and should provide a rigorous and comprehensive synthesis of the state of the art. Submissions may take the form of systematic reviews, critical reviews, or meta-analyses. All review papers must adopt a transparent and reproducible methodology, clearly describing the literature search strategy (including databases, keywords, and time frame) as well as inclusion and exclusion criteria. Beyond summarizing existing studies, contributions are expected to deliver a critical evaluation of the literature, highlighting consistencies and discrepancies among findings, identifying methodological limitations and potential biases, and outlining key knowledge gaps and future research directions. Where appropriate, authors are encouraged to include comparative tables, graphical summaries, or quantitative analyses to support the synthesis. Purely descriptive or narrative overviews lacking methodological rigor will not be considered.

By consolidating recent advances in sustainable materials and products, this special issue complements a body of literature that is often fragmented across highly specialized journals and limited to specific material classes or applications. The collected reviews aim to bridge this gap by providing cross-disciplinary perspectives and integrating harmonized, operational sustainability metrics—such as embodied carbon, circularity indicators, toxicity assessments, durability, and life cycle assessment (LCA) functional units—together with comprehensive life cycle considerations. In doing so, they offer a robust reference framework for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers working toward environmentally responsible material solutions.

Overall, this special issue seeks to accelerate knowledge transfer, support evidence-based material selection and design grounded in quantifiable sustainability indicators, and foster the development of next-generation materials and products that contribute to cleaner environments and more resilient infrastructures. We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Topics of interest:

• Bio-based, biodegradable, and circular materials: bio-based feedstocks, biodegradable polymers, recyclable materials, and design strategies for circular material flows, reuse, and end-of-life optimization.
• Low-carbon and resource-efficient materials: materials and processes aimed at reducing embodied carbon, improving resource efficiency, and enabling climate change mitigation, including low-impact alternatives for structural and functional applications.
• Sustainable composites and advanced functional materials: green composites, functional nanomaterials, and smart or multifunctional materials, with particular attention to performance–sustainability trade-offs.
• Life cycle assessment and sustainability metrics: methodological advances in LCA, definition and use of functional units, and integration of operational sustainability metrics such as embodied carbon, circularity indicators, toxicity, and durability for robust material evaluation.
• Eco-design and scalable sustainable manufacturing: eco-design approaches, sustainable and energy-efficient manufacturing processes, scalability, and techno-economic-environmental trade-offs for industrial implementation.

Prof. Dr. José Ignacio Alvarez
Dr. Paulina Faria
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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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.

• sustainable materials and products 
• green materials
• bio-based materials
• biodegradable polymers
• recyclable materials
• circular economy
• life cycle assessment (LCA)
• eco-design
• green chemistry
• sustainable composites
• low-carbon materials
• sustainable manufacturing
• functional nanomaterials
• urban sustainability
• material durability and scalability
• smart sustainable materials
• climate mitigation materials
• resource efficiency