Dear Colleagues,

In recent decades, solid waste handling schemes have been developed, and advanced systems have been implemented for recovery and reuse of material. “The zero waste concept” is used for modern disputes in waste management when the challenge is to reduce the amount of waste created and to elaborate recycling efficiency. The future, however, must provide the “beyond zero waste concept”, where we diminish waste streams by turning them to secondary raw material streams as well as landfills, considered a “bank account” for future efficient circular economy perspectives. Sustainability, first of all, should be achieved in targeted policies, effectively introduced in applied waste management schemes, and waste streams from industries and large metropolises turned to recycling material. On the other hand, old closed landfills should be looked into as secondary resource material for the future.

Hereby, we are inviting you as an expert in a field of sustainable waste management with your decades of experience in academic and applied studies.

The purpose of our special issue is to pinpoint problems with sustainable waste management in terms of policies, technologies, and their implementation in practice, resource recovery and reuse potential of secondary materials from various business streams (tourist waste, fishery waste, agricultural waste, medicine, and epidemiological waste utilization problems and many more). The topic has never-ending topicality and new approaches based on “beyond zero waste” are crucial.

Dr. Juris Burlakovs
Dr. Inga Grinfelde
Guest Editors

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• circular economy
• sustainable waste management
• industry waste
• secondary raw material
• waste management policy