Dear Colleagues,

State-of-the-art sanitation systems were designed with the main aim to protect humans and the environment from pathogens and pollutants, respectively. Sewers and municipal wastewater treatment plants are generally capable of reaching hygienic and environmental standards; however, these were not designed for recycling of resources from sewage, especially nutrients, organic matter, and water. At present, scientists and policy makers suggest circularity as an added design criterion for systems that convey substances in our society, including sanitation systems. This new criterion implies that after use, water, organic matter, and nutrients from wastewater should remain available for societal reuse on human time-scales. This striving for circularity is driven, amongst others, by the rising awareness that natural nutrient and water resources cannot endlessly be drained from the earth without jeopardizing human existence, regardless of the timing of specific scarcity threats. Furthermore, changed urban conditions and trends call for rethinking wastewater management, as the resources contained in wastewater may contribute to solving the rising water demand, climate change effects, and sustainable nutrient demand in (urban agriculture) and around urban areas. To tackle this circular challenge, interaction and cooperation between all science disciplines along the entire wastewater and nutrient chain is required. Therefore, this Special Issue calls for manuscript submissions which evaluate technological, systemic, economic, and social aspects of novel options to restore the cycling of water, organic matter, and nutrients, while still maintaining environmental and hygienic safety. Topics include but are not limited to: User acceptance of new practices for wastewater management (e.g., urine separation, source separation), new technologies for decentralized or centralized resource recovery from wastewater, use of recovered nutrient products as fertilizer, sustainability assessment, and monetizing explicit and implicit effects of management options for improved recycling of resources.

Prof. Dr. Jan Weijma
Guest Editor

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.

• Sewage treatment
• Decentralized sanitation
• Water recovery and recycling
• Nutrient recovery and recycling
• Circular wastewater management
• Social and economic assessment
• Sustainability assessment