Sustainability in Environmental Biotechnology

Dear Colleagues,

This issue aims to address the possibility of using biotechnologies for solving environmental issues in a sustainable manner. Microorganisms and plants can work “freely” for the environment, cleaning various organic and inorganic pollutants from contaminated air, water, or soil. For example, heterotrophic bacteria and fungi can remove volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from air, autotrophic bacteria can remove hydrogen sulphide from biogas, photosynthetic microorganisms (e.g., microalgae) and plants can uptake carbon dioxide from the air, denitrificans can use the nutrients from wastewaters, plants can extract the petroleum compounds from damaged soils and capture the noxes from indoor and atmospheric air. The list goes on and on. Some of these examples can be applied both terrestrially as well in space (e.g., A. platensis is a promising microalgae candidate for life support in space and has high potential in the context of the circular economy), being subject to dual benefit from knowledge transfer. By their nature, the biosystems involved in these processes are considered environmentally friendly and cost-effective; however, there is still room to enhance their environmental performance in light of sustainability. That is, extending the approach of these systems towards waste management (e.g., residual biomass valorization in agriculture or for energy purposes), integration (e.g., using wastewaters as a source of nutrients in the bioreactors treating gaseous streams), lower CO₂ emission technologies (e.g., involving microalgae for CO₂ capture in biosystems treating VOCs in air), aesthetical considerates and well-being aspects, life cycle assessment approaches (e.g., for comparison of the environmental performances of the biosystems used for the treatment of contaminated streams), innovation, and other aspects that could contribute to better environmental protection, quality of life, health, and mitigation of global warming and climate change issues are expected to be provided in the articles submitted in the frame of this call.

Dr. Gabriela Soreanu
Guest Editor

Prof. Dr. Marcin Zielinski
Dr. Magdalena Zielińska
Prof. Dr. John Morken
Co-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.