Sustainable Materials: Finding Innovative Practices and Solutions for a Changing Economy
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (25 January 2024) | Viewed by 6081
Special Issue Editors
Interests: materials selection for circular economy; material design; functional materials; sustainability; ecodesign; sustainable packaging
Interests: material change; design for sustainable behaviour; materials within the circular economy; material aging
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
It is our pleasure to announce a new Special Issue of Sustainability titled “Sustainable Materials: Finding Innovative Practices and Solutions for a Changing Economy”.
The consensus reached through the years by the Circular Economy (CE) vision is significantly high. According to the new circular economy action plan (CEAP) almost 80% of a product's environmental impact is determined in the design phase, putting materials and their application under the spotlight. New materials design and application practices are part of a growing research area, striving for the research of sustainable materials both in academy and industries.
However, “sustainable material” is a blurry term, hard to define since sustainability isn’t limited to the nature of the materials themselves but also to the systemic aspects and entire life cycle.
In this special issue is intended to collect multidisciplinary contributions aimed to have an overview on the role of materials in the CE transition, representing the current practices and solutions to deploy sustainable materials in designed artifacts and beyond.
To find this, represents a complex issue especially when it gets to the heart of the application in real contexts: in designing with emergent materials (e.g., durability, supplying, manufacturability...), in dealing with a new aesthetic-sensorial interaction, in achieving a behavioural change through materials, until the end-of-life management in a pragmatic ecosystem of actors and practices.
Research areas may include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Materials selection for circular economy
- New sustainable materials scenarios and product applications, supported by proved studies
- Design for material change for sustainable user behaviour
- Consumer perceptions of bio-based/ sustainable/ eco-materials (sensorial, tactile, olfactory, visual, aesthetic qualities) and the effect on consumer uptake
- Sustainable Materials research concerning the extraction/harvesting, processing, product’s use, end-of-life phases
- Systemic overview of materials design and/or application
- Digital fabrication tools as enablers of sustainable materials experimentation and testing
We welcome both original research articles and reviews, Case-studies based activities as well as new methodologies focusing on the materials design, their application study in product design, ecodesign research areas, coherently with new European regulations (ESG, DPP, European Green Deal…).
We look forward to receiving your contributions.
Prof. Dr. Barbara Del Curto
Dr. Debra Lilley
Prof. Dr. Sabrina Lucibello
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
- materials
- design
- circular economy
- sustainable materials
- materials ecosystem
- materials complexity
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