Routine human activities impact the environment and the consumption of natural materials and energy resources. The challenge to society is to minimize these impacts, maintain an acceptable quality of the environment, and sustain the quality of life and resource supplies for future generations. The generation of solid wastes is inevitable because all products have an end of life and humans and animals create wastes that have to be managed to maintain hygienic, healthy and tidy urban and open country environments. A key objective of the Waste Management and Research. The Journal for a Sustainable Circular Economy (WM&R) is to address these challenges through dissemination of scientifically based reliable information, e.g. in terms of waste prevention, waste recycling, recovery of energy from material residuals not suited for recycling or reuse, waste treatment, and waste disposal.

WM&R is a peer-reviewed journal that satisfies the growing demand for new and scientific information that can be referenced by waste management professionals in academia, government, industry, planning, engineering, management and operation. WM&R presents original work in the form of review articles, original articles, short articles, and letters to the editor.

WM&R encourages the submission of well organized manuscripts relating to sustainable waste management designs, operations, policies or practices and those addressing issues facing both developing and developed countries. Mass flow analyses, life cycle assessments, policy planning and system administration, innovative processes and technologies and their engineering features and cost effectiveness are among the key issues that WM&R seeks to cover through well documented reports on new concepts, systems, practical experience (including case studies), and theoretical and experimental research work. Manuscripts with limited scope or specialised application are normally not accepted. Studies on testing and characterisation of special waste streams or products with only a peripheral pertinence to solid waste management are normally referred to journals that focus on such topics. Manuscripts about modelling and software development are acceptable, when model and software applications remain accessible in the public domain. It is imperative that manuscripts are well founded in terms of existing literature and knowledge, including both recent and older publications.

Peer reviewers and editors evaluating manuscripts for publication consider as key criteria; originality, novelty and applicability of results in theory and/or in practice. Articles must be clearly written in UK English and authors must avoid duplication of information already published and avoid citing opinions without referenced foundations. Strict compliance with these and other WM&R manuscript submission guidelines is necessary to trigger the peer review process that could lead to subsequent acceptance for publication.