Sustainability Analysis of Novel Approaches to Organic Waste Valorisation in a Circular Bioeconomy

Dear Colleagues,

While ‘renewable’ is the keyword in a bioeconomy, and resource conservation is the motivation behind a circular economy, a circular bioeconomy is one in which side-streams from renewable bio-resources are looped back into the technosphere – open or closed-loop recycling or conversion from matter to energy. A full-fledged circular bioeconomy focusing only on renewable resources, is attractive for the attainment of several sustainable development goals. The gamut of recommended behaviours in this era of R’s, in a circular bioeconomy, has expanded to include ‘reclaim’, ‘remediate’, ‘reuse’, ‘repurpose’, ‘recycle’, ‘renovate’, ‘refuse’, ‘replenish’ and more…

The ‘circular bioeconomy’ paradigm has now become increasingly popular in academic, industrial, governance and research circles, coincident with the UN Sustainable Development Goals launched in 2015. It is hoped that the social, technological and organizational innovations, necessary for, and encouraged by a transition to a regenerative and restorative circular bioeconomy, will herald a renewal in the competitiveness in the global economy, environmental sustainability, positive economic development and value creation, and employment generation in the years to come.

A sustainable circular bioeconomy is feasible, if and only if all the three pillars of sustainability – social, economic, environment - are accounted for, from the very beginning. Complete circularity is ‘utopian’ but not trying at all to improve the degree of circularity will render the situation increasingly dystopic over time. The journey towards a circular bioeconomy will be facilitated by eco-innovation which in turn will be bolstered by technology push/pull, regulatory push and market pull. Academic researchers, like you all, being appealed to, to contribute articles for this special issue, have been playing a key role in educating the skeptical and unaware sections of the global population about the long-term benefits of the transition to a resource-efficient, ‘greener’ circular bioeconomy, sometimes by taking recourse to multi-criteria decision analysis, focusing on the three pillars of sustainability referred to earlier.  

This special issue proposes to build on, and add to, existing knowledge about the valorisation of organic wastes [from agriculture, forestry, municipal solid waste management, food-processing industry, etc. – the Rs being analysed using the 3P (planet, people, profit) approach, so to say.

The focus of this special issue is, as the title connotes, on Sustainability analysis of novel approaches to organic waste valorisation in a circular bioeconomy, which include: 
(a) Social sustainability analysis
(b) Economic feasibility analysis
(c) Environmental sustainability analysis
(d) Socio-economic sustainability analysis
(e) Econo-environmental sustainability analysis
(f) Socio-environmental sustainability analysis
(g) Socio-econo-environmental sustainability analysis

Authors, it goes without saying, are free to choose the source/s and type/s of organic wastes, and the destination/s of the valorised bio-products. What would be common to all the published papers, is a uni-dimensional/bi-dimensional/tri-dimensional sustainability analysis, done by taking resort to suitable sustainability analysis tools like E-LCA, S-LCA, Life-cycle costing, etc. We seek to diversify the contents of this special issue, sectorally, dimensionally and geographically, reflecting the need to find and share global solutions to global challenges. 

Dr. G. Venkatesh
Guest Editor

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• agriculture
• biorefinery
• economic feasibility
• environmental sustainability
• forestry
• municipal solid waste management
• social acceptance
• sustainability
• valorisation