From Waste to Value-Added Products: Environmental Challenges, Potentialities, and Perspectives for a Circular Economy
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Social Ecology and Sustainability".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2021) | Viewed by 4552
Special Issue Editors
Interests: antioxidants; oxidative stress; melanin; pigmentation; tyrosinase; fatty acids; omega-3; waste; recovery; by-products; molecular diagnostics; extraction buffers
Interests: polyphenols; antioxidants; melanins; bioinspired phenolic polymers; biocompatible materials; polydopamine; coatings
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
when it comes to talking about sustainability, the world is facing unprecedented challenges, one of them being the huge amount of waste produced in every aspect of our life. For example, it is estimated that around 140 billion tons of biomass from the agricultural sector are generated every year in the world and a considerable part is recognized as waste instead of food resource. Even if sometimes effects of unsustainable disposal practices are hard to see because of their long-term consequences spreading over decades, people and governments have finally become aware of the need of reducing waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling and recovery.
The global commitment is clear if we look at the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) as part of the UN Resolution “Agenda 2030”, a broad and interdependent set of goals aimed to achieving a more sustainable future. In particular, waste management is the focus of SDG 12, entitled “Responsible consumption and production”.
If cutting on waste and reducing their release to air, water and soil would reduce their adverse impacts on the environment, a wiser and more careful eye on their properties could make them become invaluable resources to exploit.
Recovery of added-value products from waste offers a wide range of opportunities. Just to list a few:
- Bioactive molecules from food waste, leading to pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals and cosmetics.
- Base and precious metals from Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), for a re-placement on the market.
- Fuel and energy from agro-industrial biomasses.
- Wastewater can be recycled for agricultural, industrial processes and other beneficial purpose reducing demand for potable water.
- Fermentation represents an environmentally clean technology for production and extraction of such bioactive compounds, providing high quality and high activity extracts, which can be incorporated in foods.
- Sustainable solar fuels production by photothermocatalytic CO2
Yes, it is more a steep road than easy path, but waste is both the problem and the solution and it is our task to find the answers to these stimulating and intriguing challenges, so that the exploitation of the resources can be not only a way of protecting environment but even a strategy to benefit to both global and local economy.
In this frame, the basic idea of this special issue is bringing together in single place most of the possible application, technologies, potentialities and perspective, discussing their strengths but not ignoring the points of criticism, considering each of them a stimulus to play our key role in the achievement of sustainability.
Dr. Raffaella Micillo
Dr. Maria Laura Alfieri
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.
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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
- by-products
- sustainability
- waste
- recovery
- circular economy
