Sustainable Solutions for Solid Waste Treatment and Resource Recovery

Dear Colleagues,

We are delighted to announce a new Special Issue, titled "Sustainable Solutions for Solid Waste Treatment and Resource Recovery", for the journal Sustainability.

Solid waste treatment and resource recovery are emerging as central issues in the global response to major challenges such as resource depletion, environmental issues, and climate change. Particularly in the field of mineral resources, as high-quality mineral reserves continue to deplete and national strategies such as "Waste-Free Cities", "Circular Economy", and "Dual Carbon" gain momentum, transforming dormant "secondary mines"—including mineral processing tailings, smelting solid waste, and chemical waste residues—into high-value-added strategic resources has become the key driver of the industry’s green and low-carbon transition.

This Special Issue explores sustainable strategies for solid waste treatment and resource recovery, with a particular focus on the advanced processing of these bulk solid wastes as “secondary resources” to unlock their latent value and to contribute insights and solutions to enhance global resource efficiency and advance the development of an ecological civilization.

For this Special Issue, we cordially welcome the submission of high-quality original research papers and review articles. Relevant research areas include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Separation and resource utilization of mineral solid waste: Primarily targeting typical solid wastes such as coal by-products, smelting slag, and chemical residues, this involves research on the intelligent separation and efficient recovery of valuable mineral components, including innovations and optimizations of physicochemical methods (such as gravity separation, magnetic separation, and electrostatic separation, etc.), as well as the development and application of intelligent processing technologies (such as sensor-based sorting, AI-driven process optimization and decision-making systems);
• Efficient separation and extraction of valuable metals from solid waste: Focusing on new technologies and methods for extracting gold, silver, copper, iron, and various strategic and critical metals (such as cobalt, lithium, nickel, rare earth elements, indium, and germanium) from solid waste;
• Use of solid waste for the preparation of high-performance functional materials: Promoting the interdisciplinary integration of "solid waste resource recovery" and "new material production", with a focus on cutting-edge research related to the preparation of high-value-added materials using solid waste as raw materials, to advance the high-value utilization and large-scale disposal of solid waste.

Dr. Bin Yang
Prof. Dr. Yulian Wang
Dr. Yafeng Fu
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-anonymized 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.