Promising Sustainable Models Toward Water, Air, and Solid Sustainable Management in the View of SDGs

Abstract

The last decade has been witnessing overwhelming efforts to achieve social sustainability from mitigating the health and environmental effects to innovative new strategies for sustainable energy production. Those efforts have been devoted to exploiting sustainable materials for handling energy shortage and environmental deterioration to fulfill the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In this article, we engage in those efforts and shed new light on sustainable models applicable to water, air, and solid management from the practical standpoint of SDGs. The first sustainable model is a combination between renewable resources and sustainable materials for the fabrication of biomass/photocatalysts hybrid composites. The green hybrid photocatalysts can be synthesized by electrospinning or 3D techniques. These geometric bio-hybrid photocatalysts are the backbone of the next photocatalytic house model. These houses can significantly participate in the mitigation of climate change via CO 2 capture and conversion to renewable energy and fuels. Furthermore, it anticipates that these photocatalytic houses are capable of participating in the alleviation of acid rain through converting toxic gasses such as nitrogen oxide (NO x ) and sulfur oxide (SO x ) into sustainable products. On the other hand, some suggestions have been raised to face and control microplastic pollution and one of these suggestions is introducing artificial intelligence such as tracer-based sorting as a sustainable strategy solution to enhance the plastic circular economy. The last model relies on optimizing the utilization of Jatropha in the landfill post-closure area toward integrated solid waste management and alternative biofuel production. These models will pave new ways of realizing sustainability.

Micro- and Nano-Plastics Contaminants in the Environment: Sources, Fate, Toxicity, Detection, Remediation, and Sustainable Perspectives

“…Thus, SDG 9 (Target 9.4) which aims to promote resource efficiency and eco-friendly technologies, is best linked with SDGs 8, 12 and 13, which involve sustainable economic growth and industrial innovations. Hence, investing in sustainable materials and renewable resource technology efforts are crucial for achieving net-zero emissions [269].…”

“…investing in sustainable materials and renewable resource technology efforts are crucial for achieving net-zero emissions [269].…”

Sustainability in Numbers by Data Analytics

“…These include the following: SDGs; Paris Agreement and nationally determined contributions; circular economy and minimizing circularity gap as well as related terms such as closing the waste loop, end-of-life management of waste, ban on single-use plastics, ban on export of solid waste, design out waste, emissions reduction targets, recycling targets, etc. [15][16][17][18][19][20][21]; sustainability gap [2]; energy efficiency and more renewable energy in the energy mix [22][23][24]; water efficiency [25,26]; materials efficiency [27,28]; supply chain resilience and efficiency [29][30][31][32][33][34][35]; decarbonization efforts including low-carbon economy, carbon trading, low-carbon materials, low-carbon products, low-carbon services, green economy, carbon footprint reporting carbon tax [36][37][38][39]; green financing and related terminologies such as extended produced responsibility (EPR), environmental product declarations (EPD), energy efficiency targets, eco-design, eco-labeling, Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) reporting, and packaging agreement [40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47]; lifecycle assessment and related terms such as lifecycle costing and lifecycle engineering [48][49][50][51]; renewable and sustainable materials; electronic waste (E-waste); design for recyclin...…”