Ceramics for the Circular Economy – Call for papers

The continuous growth of the global economy has led to mass-production of short-lived products, over-exploitation of scarce resources and generation of overwhelming amounts of waste and emissions. The current consumption model is largely linear (take – make – use – dispose), resulting in avoidable environmental and human health impacts. Three billion new consumers entering the market worldwide in the next 20 or 30 years will put enormous pressure on our shared resource base. Under ‘business as usual’, annual global material extraction has been projected to reach 183 billion tonnes by 2050, more than double the amount in 2015.

A new paradigm, the Circular Economy, has at its core, the goal of reducing resource consumption through reuse, and recycling of materials and maximizing energy efficiency. Creating a circular economy requires fundamental changes throughout the value chain, education, product design and technology, business models and finance, ways of preserving natural resources and turning waste into resources, and norms and practices in consumer behaviour. Ceramics are not alien to this paradigm shift. The past years have witnessed significant efforts in the ceramic industry for achieving a higher degree of sustainability driven by both economic and regulatory pressures.

This special issue addresses several leading areas of sustainability within production and use of ceramics and composites. These include life-cycle assessment, resource and waste management through minimization and reuse, industrial symbiosis such as by-products exchange, greenhouse emissions reduction, improving renewable energy sources, testing and characterization, and regulatory aspects.

This special issue aims at building bridges among various stakeholders involved in the ceramics community, including researchers from academia, industry, and government. This valuable cross-fertilization is very much necessary to find solutions for sustainable growth with intelligent and reasonable resource utilization.

It is therefore our pleasure to invite researchers and colleagues to submit a manuscript for this Special Issue here:

https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/act
Full-length research articles and review papers are welcome.
Cite Special Issue in your cover letter and in step 6 of your submission

Contact:
Dr. Arnaldo Moreno Berto, Special Issue Guest Editor
Associate Editor of the International Journal of Applied Ceramic Technology
Institute of Ceramic Technology, Department of Chemical Engineering
Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain
E-mail: arnaldo.moreno@itc.uji.es