Editorial
Solid waste management in emerging economies: opportunities and challenges for reuse and recycling

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2022.106635Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Presented the content and key theoretical or methodology aspects in this SI.

  • Described SWM opportunities and challenges for reuse and recycling.

  • Presented the conceptual themes, methods, cases, and models.

  • Summarized practical policies, possible solutions, and implication.

Abstract

The increasing generation of solid waste, varying waste compositions, and inefficient waste recovery processes have limited the performance of traditional approaches. It is urgent to collect a virtual special issue (VSI) that consolidates research on efficient models and better treatment technologies to break up the current system limitations. Recently, Solid Waste Management (SWM) strategies that focus on reuse and recycling have revealed their current limitations or challenges. An awareness of the progress in addressing these limitations through the advancement in available technologies and the development of new systematic approaches for SWM are of increasing importance not just for advanced but more for emerging economies. Herein, this VSI aims to provide a review and collect important studies for SWM on reuse and recycling. The challenges and future opportunities in the application of SWM have been discussed to highlight the potential development in this VSI.

Introduction

The environmental challenges facing human society have become increasingly concentrated due to rising living standards and rapid increase in population, which has resulted in regions with high population density. This has tremendously increased solid waste generation. In the face of these changes, the government must implement various solid waste management (SWM) practices; nevertheless, waste treatment infrastructure is continuously strained despite the efficient operation of waste minimization and resource recovery programs in emerging economies. The structural changes in community behavior of an economic system and solid waste disposal routines influence SWM execution (Maihami and Ghalehkhondabi, 2022; Tsai et al., 2021). Dissociations between economic growth, environmental pressures, and societal sustainability greatly impede SWM technology, which is then pressed to its limits, placing unexpected burdens on society (Araee et al., 2020).

More in-depth studies are needed to improve waste processes so that we can transition towards sustainability and create a society free from the risk of resource exhaustion. The opportunities and challenges for reuse and recycling should be preserved. However, rapid elaboration, cumulative discernment, and diverse social, political, environmental, and economic challenges result in very different technical and nontechnical barriers, making SWM a complex and uncertain topic (Bui et al., 2020; Fukuda, 2020).

Indeed, SWM also needs to understand the opportunities and challenges for reuse and recycling in solving key social and environmental problems. Highlighting these opportunities and challenges are a significant step towards improving waste management outcomes, developing technologies, and implementing alternative solutions. For instance, Bui et al. (2020) identified a set of barriers related to SWM practice and revealed that social acceptability, technical integration, and financial and economic problems are factors that affect SWM. The essential nature of technical perspectives, certain gaps related to aligning the technical barriers to reuse and recycling concept, and the nontechnical characteristics of sustainable perspectives to improve SWM can be addressed by examining the opportunities and challenges for reuse and recycling.

Understanding the SWM opportunities and challenges for reuse and recycling to enhance resource utilization and environmental protection in emerging countries are necessary (Chien et al., 2021; Maihami and Ghalehkhondabi, 2022). For example, Lin et al. (2022) employed artificial intelligence for hybrid optimization for reuse and recycle to promote cleaner semiconductor manufacturing. SWM resource utilization seeks to achieve both social and environmental sustainability by catalyzing innovations that underpin sustainable development. Improper disposal of solid waste creates unsanitary conditions, while these conditions in turn can lead to pollution of the environment. This VSI aims to further address the paradigms or challenges in emerging economies.

Section snippets

The virtual special issue research questions

This SI focuses on evolving SWM principles that explore the practices or policy recommendations for advancing the knowledge for resources optimization. The goal is to identify various SWM aspects that serve as either opportunities or challenges for reuse and recycling in the mining of resources from wastes. Contributors submitted excellent works ranging from the examination of case studies, to quantitative analytical models for specific situations, to broad-based case work. The contributions

Contributions of the virtual special issue

This section highlights the opportunities and challenges as a significant step towards improving waste management outcomes, developing technologies, and implementing alternative solutions. In particular, Sinha et al. (2022) conducted a comparative investigation of the long-run determinants of municipal solid waste (MSW) generation for the 10 best and least recycling economies in the OECD in terms of a set of technological, regulatory, and institutional regressors such as eco-innovation,

Findings of the virtual special issue

  • Waste-derived synthesis process is restricted to the pilot scale with high investment costs and poor material recovery serving as the key barriers that hinder the development of the polyhydroxyalkanoates synthesis process on a larger industrial scale. An alternative pathway is to apply industrial ecology and circular economy concepts to enhance the sustainability of the bioplastic industry by cooperating with other biorefinery plants that result in the formation of a promising industrial

Conclusion

This VSI provides the opportunities and challenges for reuse and recycling and its application in MSW cases. However, this VSI relates the studies to MSW in regional studies, policy, and industry cases. In summary, potential research directions include:

  • There is great potential to conduct more case studies in solving the MSW issues from the perspectives of optimization models, wind turbines, and pollutants reduction as for the final treatment and recovery processes. For instance, wind turbines

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper

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