Recycling and Upcycling of Plastic Wastes

Dear Colleagues,

The need for plastic waste valorization via recycling or upcycling technologies has become a necessity that spurs from the projected depletion of fossil resources (petroleum and coal), but mostly from the emerging environmental pollution and the associated detrimental effects on human and animal health. The nature/composition and origin of municipal or industrial plastic wastes that are based on existing high performance engineering thermoplastic and thermoset polymers reinforced with various organic/inorganic additives, determine the applicability of mechanical or (thermo)chemical recycling towards lower-grade plastics or back to the monomers or other platform chemicals with a synthetic polymer potential. Alternatively, chemical upcycling may transform plastic waste to chemicals, materials, or high quality fuels via conventional (or adjusted) petroleum refining catalytic processes. From the economic and sustainability perspective, collection and sorting issues, along with the whole logistics and legislation chain (e.g., transportation, storage, and security, etc.), play an equally important role. Looking at the future, the molecular design of new “conventional” polymers or bio-based polymers and composites, which may be subjected to facile chemical recycling via green and mild methods, in terms of energy and toxic solvents requirements, is also of paramount importance. Within this context, we invite the submission of original research papers and review articles presenting the latest achievements and trends in sustainable mechanical and (bio)chemical processes for the recycling and upcycling of all types of traditional plastic waste, as well as modern, specially designed petroleum-derived polymers/plastics and bio-based polymers, towards recycled plastics, chemicals/monomers, fuels and materials, including the important topics of technoeconomic analysis and life cycle assessment.

Prof. Dr. Konstantinos S. Triantafyllidis
Dr. Michael T. Timko
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. Sustainable Chemistry is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly 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 1000 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.

• waste plastics
• municipal and industrial wastes
• collection, management, pretreatment, sorting
• thermoplastics, thermosets, composites
• Bio-based polymers
• (bio)degradable polymers
• mechanical recycling
• (thermo)chemical recycling and upcycling
• pyrolysis, gasification, hydrolysis, solvolysis
• biological recycling
• homogeneous, heterogeneous, and bio-catalysis
• alternative/benign methods (sono- and photo-chemistry, microwave)
• catalytic upgrading
• platform chemicals and monomers, fuels
• techno-economic analysis
• life cycle assessment
• green and sustainable chemistry