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In a circular economy, extended producer responsibility (EPR) is a regulatory approach that accounts for all environmental costs associated with a product throughout its life cycle. When considering the EPR, the regulator must (1) design an integrated framework for different stakeholders and (2) provide effective policies to create financial incentives to accelerate the circular system. Recycling funds and subsidies are the most prominent financial strategies that can either encourage or curtail the flows of recycled products. In Indonesia, a few companies provided recycling bonus s to their customers as incentives to increase the recycling rate. However, the recycling rate was not as effective as expected by the enterprise because recycling was practiced by a limited number of companies, rendering it economically unviable. The enterprises hope the government could develop a recycling fund system. In order to develop the recycling fund system, a system dynamic model was proposed and simulated to optimize the recycling funds and subsidies based on decentralized reverse supply chains. Although it is not a novelty model; however, the research show a very significant results for the government in Indonesia. This enabled a more precise, well-planned, and sustainable decision-making process for the EPR. In addition, by utilizing the system dynamic model with different scenarios in a real case study (aseptic paper packaging waste), we found that the capacity of the recycler could become the reference for the funds to be paid by the importer-producer group, wherein the recycling rate will increase with an increase in the recycling fund.

Co-hydrothermal carbonization (co-HTC) has emerged recently as a promising thermochemical technique that can transfer organic solid residue (e.g., biomass, sewage sludge, plastic, livestock manure) into value-added products (i.e., hydrochar). This advanced mechanism conceals the weakness of hydrochars derived from the hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) of a single feedstock. The co-HTC of various feedstock blends used for hydrochar is reviewed in this article. Biomass/sludge, biomass/plastic, biomass/coal, biomass/manure were the most common feedstock blends. Many studies have found that co-HTC, compared to single feedstock, enhances the yield, ultimate and proximate properties, higher heating value (HHV), thermal behaviors, and overall quality of hydrochars. The synergistic effects of feedstock types, blending ratio, temperature, and residence time are also discussed. The feedstock mixing ratio emerges as the most important variable, followed by feedstock types, temperature, and reaction time. Thermogravimetric (TG) and derivative thermogravimetric (DTG) analyses have made it possible to better understand the thermal decomposition characteristics of hydrochars. In most papers on this subject, the range of combustion temperature and comprehensive combustion index (CCI) has increased. Overall, the physicochemical and thermal behaviors of hydrochar derived from co-HTC make it energy-efficient and environmentally sound by reducing the waste load and avoiding pollution issues. Additionally, several important suggestions have been recommended for future advances being made in co-HTC of feedstocks and its comprehensive application.

In this paper, we report on the economic and environmental issues associated with a pyrolysis plant for processing sugarcane residues. The analyses consider four scenarios: (i) raw sugarcane bagasse (SCB), (ii) raw sugarcane trash (SCT) and acid-leached (iii) sugarcane bagasse (L-SCB) and (iv) sugarcane trash (L-SCT). The systems were studied by integrating a comprehensive mathematical model and experimental data. The environmental impact assessment was performed using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology, including agriculture and sugar industry stages into the system boundaries. The results demonstrate that the process economy heavily depends on the bio-oil composition, yield, feedstock cost, and leaching conditions. Bio-oil from L-SCT and L-SCB contained more than 30 wt%. levoglucosan, which made it a candidate to produce fermentable sugars or other valuable chemicals instead of being burnt in low-efficiency boilers. The unitary cost of bio-oil produced from L-SCT (0.89 USD/L) and L-SCB (0.75 USD/L) was below that obtained for raw biomass, even when the Total Investment Costs behaved differently. The environmental impacts, expressed in damage categories, associated with L-SCB and L-SCT, were nearly 86% higher than for SCB and SCT. The highest impact could be attributed to the citric acid (CA) production chain, biomass transport, and harvesting operations.

Due to growing environmental concerns mainly related to non-renewable fuels and high added-value chemicals, new solutions should reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Biorefineries, which use lignocellulosic biomass as raw material, emerges as a promising alternative to replace fossil fuels and to avoid competition between food and fuel production for arable land and drinking water. Sugarcane is one of the most harvested crops in the world, mainly in the equatorial zone. One tonne of processed cane generates between 300 and 400 kg of bagasse. This work proposes a biorefinery configuration for the co-production of ethanol, xylitol, lignin, and cellulose acetate, analyzing two different scenarios in the context of low sugarcane availability. The analysis included the determination of mass, total capital investment, total manufacturing costs, CO2 footprint, and water consumption. The cellulose acetate, ethanol, and xylitol production were economically viable only if lignin is considered a product. Positive net income, with return on investment in at least ten years, was achieved. Based on the environmental assessment, the carbon capture capacity is about 400 kg per tonne of sugarcane included in the process was determined.

This study evaluated the potential of ultrasonic enhanced Fenton-based advanced oxidation to reduce toxicity, total phenol (TPh) and organic matter (COD) from olive mill wastewater (OMW). Emphasis was also placed on suggesting a sustainable treatment strategy in the light of accumulated scientific evidence, indicating the role of Fenton-based oxidation in the suggested scheme. Fenton oxidation and Fenton-like oxidation (with Fe2+ and Fe3+) were tested as selected advanced oxidation methods. The experiments were conducted in such a way that the individual removal efficiencies of ultrasonication and advanced oxidation processes be evaluated separately and in sequence. The impact on toxicity removal was tested by means of a standard respirometric method, also currently used to assess biodegradation in wastewaters. Response Surface Methodology (RSM) involving central composite design (CCD) was implemented to assess the optimum conditions. Results highlighted the merit of Fenton-based oxidation with an 80% TPh reduction and a decrease of toxicity down to the narrow margin of 13–17%, together with a COD reduction of 20–26%, all quite meaningful for the following step of biological treatment. The ultrasonic pretreatment also proved to be quite useful as it secured up to 40% of particulate COD dissolution. Studies on particle size distribution of the OMW clearly showed that preliminary treatment including advanced oxidation would leave behind the bulk of soluble COD accumulated below the size of 3 nm. Accordingly, co-treatment of OMW diluted with municipal sewage was recommended after a pretreatment sequence of holding/plain settling; chemical treatment and Fenton-based oxidation. For OMWs with low particulate COD (VSS) content, Fenton-based oxidation enhanced by ultrasonic pretreatment would be a viable option in the view of effective particulate COD dissolution achieved in this study when coupled with ultrafiltration, prior to joint biological treatment with sewage. The study highlighted advanced oxidation as an indispensable step in the treatment of olive mill wastewaters.

Mercury pollution from artisanal gold mining causes severe environmental and health problems, especially to operators and people living around the processing facilities. Over 2000 tonnes/a of mercury is released to the environment by the artisanal miners which is the largest man-made source of mercury pollution. Here we present a novel method using a local plant, cassava, common in many artisanal mining areas in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, to dissolve gold from ores. In our experiments, we used a liquid by-product of cassava flour manufacturing, “manipueira” to leach gold from the gold ore. It contains hydrogen cyanide, generating from the hydrolysis of cyanogenic glycosides in the cassava plant. The results were very promising to replace the use of mercury, as approximately 50% of the gold content was extracted from the ore in 24 h.

Although urine constitutes less than 1% volume of the total wastewater, it adds up 50–80% of the nutrient load [Phosphates (PO43−) and Nitrates (NO3−), Ammonium (NH4+)] in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). Recovery of Phosphorous (P) and Nitrogen (N) from urine diminishes the eutrophication impact as well it could act as a sustainable source of P by lessening dependence on finite phosphorite reservoirs. Due to its environmental (carbon-negative process) and economic (produced from waste) value, biochar is gaining the researcher’s attention in recent years. Many studies are ongoing to introduce novel structures and modifications in the surface properties of biochar for efficient adsorption of P and N. Direct application of urine as fertilizer has been discouraged due to various hygienic pitfalls further forced to explore the alternative nutrient recovery methods. This review article explores the nutrient recovery paradigms from source-separated human urine for abridging the nutrient gap between wastewater treatment and agricultural productivity using pristine/engineered biochar. The influencing factors for P and N’s adsorption process by biochar and its detailed mechanisms have been outlined. Further, it deliberates the possible strategies of engineering the biochar to enhance the recovery of P and N from human urine. Applications of nutrient-loaded biochar in an agricultural field could act as a slow-release fertilizer to releases P and N in addition to soil conditioning. This review emphasized the challenges of storage, transportation, contamination of urine, and possible difficulties in the adsorption process by pristine/engineered biochar.

Fruit and vegetables contain molecules that have particular colors, which can potentially be an environmentally attractive substitute for their synthetic counterparts in (non-)food applications. The most sustainable source for such natural colorants would be by the valorization of by-products from the fruit and vegetable industries, but qualitative and quantitative characteristics of food by-products for this purpose remain scarce. Natural dyes also show mediocre stability and affinity toward textile fibers, which questions their potential feasibility for application and level of sustainability to overcome these issues. This review describes three dye classes (i.e., anthocyanins, quinones, and carotenoids) along with their occurrence, mass, and concentration in by-products that are generated from agricultural losses as well as the fruit and vegetable processing industries. To tackle the shortcomings of natural dyes on fibers, several application techniques were collected from the literature. A discussion on techno-economic potential and environmental sustainability is included. The latter is done by including a life cycle assessment (LCA) to investigate the environmental impact of extracting anthocyanins, quinones, and carotenoids from fruit and vegetable processing by-products and their subsequent application to the dyeing process. The mapping of by-products for each natural dye class illustrates the vast availability of agro-food residues (>0.1 Mt annually in the EU-28) with a natural dye content of up to 56 kg/t DW for anthocyanins, 18 kg/t DW for quinones, and 593 kg/t DW for carotenoids. Metallic mordants are mostly favored for improving the fixation of natural dyes but entail potential environmental issues. Greener approaches, such as biomordants and enzymes, still show room for improvement, chemical modification methods might also guarantee dye fixation, though questionable in environmental sustainability. The different valorization scenarios of anthocyanins, quinones, and carotenoids from food waste, analyzed with LCA, showed the environmental competitiveness of these natural dyes, applied as a crude extract, compared to synthetic dyes. The valorization routes design shows that agricultural losses and food processing waste streams are adequate sources of natural dyes, especially to be applied in niche scale applications.

In the last decade, there have been significant developments in the field of intelligent energy management systems (IEMSs), with various methods and new solutions proposed for managing the energy resources intelligently. An important issue related to finding the desired outcomes remains unexplored, i.e., how to determine key insights from the sparse academic literature in the age of digital publishing. To mitigate the issue, this study proposes a novel strategy to systematically survey the relevant studies by converting the sparse literature into visual presentations. We first apply a systematic approach called a PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-analyses) statement to provide the insights from the published literature of the past decade (2010–2020). Then, VOSviewer experiments are conducted to transform these sparse scholarly data into visual representations. In total, eighty-one papers published in high-impact journals are identified based on their scientific soundness and relevance, and a VOSviewer analysis is applied. The analysis revealed the existence of three research clusters focused on the following main thematic areas: the energy management in smart homes and smart grids (35 journal papers); the emerging concept of context-awareness (26 journal papers); and the role of privacy preservation in IEMSs (20 journal papers). This analysis uncovers the current state of IEMSs and explores existing issues, methods, findings, and gaps. Thus, future research directions have been recommended to fill the existing gaps. This systematic literature review is to assist both researchers and industry practitioners to understand the research gaps of previous studies.

Product longevity is an important part of the circular economy discussion, contributing to global sustainable development. However, practicing and adopting product longevity remain challenging. Currently, the literature primarily focuses on various proposals and strategies that could lead to an increase in the longevity of products. However, adopting product longevity in practice demands an overview of barriers that must be accounted for before appropriate strategies and proposals can be selected and implemented. Until now, such an overview of the barriers for longevity is largely undefined. This paper contributes by identifying 14 distinct barriers that are likely to obstruct companies from introducing long-lasting products, to challenge their product development or to make it difficult for consumers to keep or maintain their products for a long time. In this paper, a comprehensive review provides a list of barriers that have been identified through the existing literature across three perspectives: 1) companies and manufacturers, 2) designers, engineers and developers and 3) customers/consumers and users. A systematic search revealed 4204 academic papers that relate to the topic. After reviewing the titles, abstracts and keywords of these papers, a total of 143 papers combined with additional 62 articles identified through snowballing and postidentification were identified as eligible to constitute the foundation of this review. From these, a list of 14 product longevity barriers was created. The result is a unique identification and overview of barriers to product longevity as well as a categorisation of these barriers with respect to stakeholders. Product longevity is an important part of the circular economy discussion, contributing to global sustainable development. However, practicing and adopting product longevity remain challenging. Currently, the literature primarily focuses on various proposals and strategies that could lead to an increase in the longevity of products. However, adopting product longevity in practice demands an overview of barriers that must be accounted for before appropriate strategies and proposals can be selected and implemented. Until now, such an overview of the barriers for longevity is largely undefined.This paper contributes by identifying 14 distinct barriers that are likely to obstruct companies from introducing long-lasting products, to challenge their product development or to make it difficult for consumers to keep or maintain their products for a long time. In this paper, a comprehensive review provides a list of barriers that have been identified through the existing literature across three perspectives: 1) companies and manufacturers, 2) designers, engineers and developers and 3) customers/consumers and users. A systematic search revealed 4204 academic papers that relate to the topic. After reviewing the titles, abstracts and keywords of these papers, a total of 143 papers combined with additional 62 articles identified through snowballing and post-identification were identified as eligible to constitute the foundation of this review. From these, a list of 14 product longevity barriers was created.The result is a unique identification and overview of barriers to product longevity as well as a categorisation of these barriers with respect to stakeholders.

The rapid development of new energy represented by wind power and photovoltaic power generation necessitates higher requirements for the flexibility of traditional thermal power generation units. The role of thermal power units will change from conventional main power to auxiliary power, not only because of the need for the survival and development of thermal power enterprises, but also because of the inevitable requirement for promoting the revolution of power energy production and consumption in China. The economy of thermal power unit flexibility transformation is an important constraint factor for decision-making in thermal power unit transformation. How to consider the economic factor of the thermal power unit transformation is a key problem for decision-making. In this paper, a nonlinear programming model is proposed to solve the problem. By introducing greedy strategy and improved reproduction strategy, an improved invasive weed optimization (IWO) algorithm is also proposed to solve the problem. Finally, a case study with three different scenario assumptions was conducted according to the most used transformation schemes of thermal power units in China, and the results were derived by using the proposed model and the improved IWO method. The comparative analysis of the results showed that the more the thermal power units participated in deep peak shaving, the greater the risk of the flexibility transformation of the thermal power units. In addition, under the condition of the same proportion of peak shaving, the risk of transformation without oil peak shaving was lower than that of oil peak shaving. Thus, the improved IWO algorithm can provide a stable and satisfactory solution. The research in this paper can provide a more scientific basis for decision-making on the flexibility transformation of the thermal power unit and can provide a reference for the selection of the flexibility transformation scheme of the thermal power unit.

Cultivating water markets is an urgent task related to the sustainable use of water resources. With the intention of promoting water conservation, China has been actively exploring and fostering a water rights market since the turn of the century. This paper discusses whether water rights trading (WRT) promotes water conservation in agriculture using the panel data of 30 provinces in China from 1999 to 2018, settling 2014 as the beginning of water rights trading policy. National water rights pilots and provincial water rights pilots are selected as the subjects of this study, and the DID method is used for basic analysis and mechanistic analysis. This paper includes three major findings: (1) agricultural water use (AWU) in the water rights pilots were significantly lower by 992.7 million m3 compared to non-pilot areas, a proportional decrease of about 8.04%. (2) water rights market has a stronger effect on saving water in areas with high and low AWU than medium AWU; national pilots have stronger impact compared to provincial pilots; also, the policy has the stronger impact in the regions with higher precipitation. (3) the two main channels of water-saving effects from the policy are the promotion of agricultural technology innovation and the water rights transfer to high water consuming industries. This paper shows that water rights trading can reduce agricultural water use, providing valuable insights for current and future water management in China.

Many higher education institutions (HEIs) around the world are involved in a variety of sustainability initiatives. These are acknowledged to be important elements in fostering the cause of sustainability in HEIs, in further developing the organizations’ culture and in acting as enablers in the institutional embedding of sustainability. But despite the relevance of sustainability initiatives, there is a lack of systematic international efforts in how best to map them, especially in Latin America. On the basis of the need to address this gap, this paper reports on the results of an empirical study, aimed at analyzing the current status of sustainability initiatives among Latin American HEIs. Apart from a review of the latest literature, an international survey was performed to design a model using principal component analysis to identify the main descriptors of sustainability initiatives among Latin American HEIs and also the major drivers and challenges. The study sheds some light on the ways universities perceive and handle sustainability-related initiatives. The results show that sustainability is being incorporated in more than 80% of the sampled universities, and that a special emphasis is being given to campus operations. The value of the paper resides on the fact that it one of the few papers that have holistically investigated trends in sustainable development across universities in Latin America. The implications of the study are twofold. It maps for the first time how sustainable development initiatives are being practiced in 157 universities in 13 countries, being one of the most comprehensive studies of its kind, and it also outlines some of the main challenges that universities in the region face. The central message of this paper is that the different levels of emphasis given to SD in Latin American universities need to be better understood in order to catalyze continued and long-term actions.

Studies using Hedonic housing price model to discuss residents' demand for urban green space (UGS) demonstrate the importance that residents place on UGS. While much of the empirical findings have focused on residents' willingness to pay, more attention needs to be paid on its temporal change and spatial heterogeneity. Taking advantage of the diverse composition of urban parks, housing, and residents in Beijing, this paper explores the dynamic and heterogeneous demand for UGS. Using more than 240 thousand micro housing resale transaction data from 2011 to 2019, this paper constructs a Hedonic model to empirically estimate and confirm the basic, dynamic and heterogenous willingness to pay of residents for urban parks. Our empirical findings confirm the rising and heterogeneous demand for UGS by Chinese urban residents. First, the willingness to pay for parks of urban residents has continued to grow during our study period. Second, in view of different socioeconomic characteristics, there exists heterogeneous demand related to the housing of residents and different types of parks. Residents who live in homes with a larger size have a stronger demand for urban parks. Meanwhile, urban residents prefer parks with free entry over fee-based parks, and they have strong preference for some specific types of parks. Moreover, we conduct a survey and collect 907 valid samples to directly obtain residents' willingness to pay for urban parks, and the survey results further confirm the abovementioned findings. This study deepens the understanding of urban residents’ demand for UGS, and will contribute to more scientific decision making on the planning, financing and management of UGS.

Electric mobility is being studied as a possible solution for reducing the environmental impact associated to the transportation sector. However, there is a huge ongoing debate among scholars and practitioners on the extent to which Electric Vehicles perform better in terms of greenhouse gases emissions against Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles, and especially on the variables that affect such performance. To the best of our knowledge, most of the studies addressing the topic mainly focus only on some specific phases of a vehicle's life cycle, such as vehicle manufacturing and use, while comprehensive evaluations of the greenhouse gases emissions during a vehicle's life cycle are quite rare. Therefore, the paper aims to develop a comprehensive evaluation framework in order to estimate the environmental impact associated to Electric Vehicles and Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles, by adopting a Life Cycle Assessment approach. The evaluation framework is then adopted to estimate the environmental impact associated to Electric Vehicles and Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles in four different scenarios, each one assuming different countries in which the phases of a vehicle's life cycle take place. Results show that CO2 emissions over the Electric Vehicle's life cycle are lower than the ones associated to a comparable Internal Combustion Engine Vehicle in all the scenarios analysed. Moreover, the analysis highlights: (i) the huge impact on a vehicle's CO2 emissions associated to the geographical location in which the upstream phases of the vehicle supply chain take place (mainly for Electric Vehicles); (ii) the primary impact played by the use phase on the Electric Vehicles CO2 emissions, followed by the vehicle and battery manufacturing ones. Both evidences reinforce the impact of the energy mix on the environmental performance of Electric Vehicles, as further confirmed by the sensitivity analysis. The paper contributes to the extant literature by reaffirming the better environmental performance of Electric Vehicles compared to Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles in terms of CO2 emissions over the whole life cycle, also providing policymakers with useful suggestions for the promotion of Electric Vehicles as a means to tackle environmental issues.

Globally, most industrial parks that have not gone through a proper site selection process have been neglected or underutilised and such active sites tend to burn a lot of fuels and generate greenhouse gases. Technology must be used to conduct on-site investigations of the spatial and non-spatial factors of industrial parks, especially the emerging Eco-Industrial Park (EIP). The paper seeks to appraise the global application, capability and acceptability of Geographic Information System (GIS) and Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) tools in the EIP sites selection and planning. Also, to identify the benefits of mixing MCDM tools when integrating with GIS. There have been some reviews on the use of GIS and MCDM methods, but so far, there is none on the role of GIS and MCDM methods in EIP site selection. Geospatial and MCDM tools can be used to carefully select EIP sites, where materials and energy can be shared to achieve cleaner production, reduce environmental pollution and promote sustainable development. To understand the usage of these tools and their role in the EIP site selection process, a critical review of twenty-two papers published from 2007 to 2020 indexed by Google Scholar, Springer, IEEE Xplore and Web of Science have been developed for the first time. The articles are classified based on country/region, journal of publication, year and citations of publication, the authors and technologies applied. The results show that most studies on EIP site selection come from Iran and China. The Journal of Environmental Monitoring and Assessment has the highest number of articles published at 28%. The highest number of articles was published in 2014 with 312 citations. GIS and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) topped the technologies used, accounting for 42% and 24% respectively, and hybrid tools 34%. As categorised by criteria content, there was an overlap of criteria in most journals. Though, water bodies, utilities, infrastructure, and natural characteristics were prominent. Renewable energy resources were not given attention by most researchers, and risk assessment was absent from the site selection literature. A blend of traditional MCDM tools constitutes the state-of-the-art tools, and when these are combined with GIS in EIP site surveys, they execute to obtain actual results. Future EIP site selection that is integrated with risk assessment is envisioned to be industry 4.0 (4IR)-driven through a combination of GIS and artificial intelligence, and the recently developed MCDM hybrid modules.

The global economy is advancing towards a low-carbon future. Alongside this energy transition, the sustainability concept has become a fundamental value of our society, encouraging a worldwide discussion on the consideration of socio-environmental issues by the energy sector. In Brazil, the electricity generation expansion planning has not been doing enough to incorporate these issues into its decision-making process, especially in regards to alternative and renewable energy sources. Considering that Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) is suitable for addressing this situation, we focus on one of its first steps, which consists of defining a set of indicators able to communicate sustainability issues. With this in mind, this paper aims at incorporating sustainability into the decision-making process concerning electricity generation in Brazil by formulating a set of indicators. We carry out a systematic review for collecting the leading environmental, social, and economic indicators used by scientific papers focused on recent and practical LCSA studies concerning electricity generation and that contemplate alternative and renewable energy sources. Thus, we analyze the frequency of indicators in a sample of 41 papers and screen them against selection criteria and their relevance for the Brazilian context. As a result, we establish a set of 28 indicators (18 environmental, four social, and six economic). It is clear from our findings that LCSA practitioners have been facing different levels of methodological and practical challenges depending on the dimension of sustainability, which reflects on the number of environmental, social, and economic indicators collected from the overall sample.

Precision, sustainability and intelligence are the development trend of livestock farming in the future. Precision livestock farming (PLF) is a key step to achieve the sustainable development of smart farms, but it is still in the initial stage and has broad prospects. In order to realize precise livestock production, it is necessary to speed up the popularization of intelligent technologies such as environmental control, disease early warning, precise feeding and remote diagnosis. By analyzing the background and technical features of wearable Internet of Things (W-IoT), this paper puts forward a new scheme of applying W-IoT to PLF. Through the detailed survey of the related research on W-IoT and PLF, we believe that precise perception of information, biocompatibility of wearable devices, and sustainability monitoring of wearable systems are necessary contents. However, most wearable technologies that can generate precise, dynamic and sustainable signals are only applicable to humans, and rarely modified or tested specifically for farm animals. At present, these innovative technologies are gradually promoted to livestock farming, which are expected to become one of the most effective solutions for PLF in smart farms. In addition, this paper also discusses the benefits, challenges and prospects of the W-IoT in farm animals.

A comprehensive analysis of the archival literature on sustainable (i.e., socioeconomic, and environmental friendly) machining of advanced aerospace materials and composites has been performed. Specifically, the paper focuses on the techniques to improve the machinability of difficult to cut materials (Steel alloys, Ni-based super alloys, Ti-based alloys, and composites) frequently consume in aerospace manufacturing industry. The current industrial requirement on high-performance sustainable machining of advanced super alloys and composites have been addressed for the machining process optimization to gain reasonable profit margin. Here, the specific interest areas are formulation of high-performance vegetable oil-based metalworking fluid (MWF), health and environmental conscious machining of difficult to cut materials and future perspectives on biodegradable MWFs on machining advanced aerospace materials and composites. The proposed approaches of the sustainable and cleaner production for the above-mentioned areas involves the occupational health and safety, minimum waste (i.e., effluent) generation, elimination of the environment pollution (i.e., MWF usage and disposal phases) and high-performance machining. Additionally, the influence of tribological properties of vegetable oil based MWFs on thermophysical characteristics of difficult to cut materials have been critically reviewed. The study presented in the paper is timely valuable due to the rapid increment of the demand on sustainable machining requirement in difficult to cut materials. Moreover, the presented comprehensive analysis, proposed suggestions and recommendations will help the next generation scientists to find the recent advances as well as future avenues of research on high performance sustainable machining of advanced aerospace materials and composites (i.e., category of difficult to cut materials) to ensure process optimization and industrial sustainability.

In England Duty of Care legislation requires businesses to ensure the waste they generate is managed in a responsible way protecting both human health and the environment. Businesses usually comply with Duty of Care by paying a service provider, authorised by the Environment Agency, to collect their waste. Non-compliance with Duty of Care could mean businesses are illegally dumping waste or using household waste services which is prohibited. Under Duty of Care, waste is tracked using Waste Transfer Notes which record important information on the waste collected including its source, quantity, composition and who collected it. Historically the system was paper based but in 2014 an electronic version - Electronic Duty of Care (EDOC) – was launched which aimed to lead to a more efficient system for tracking waste. In England whilst the Environment Agency is the regulatory body for the environment, enforcement of Duty of Care is conducted at a localised level by local authorities. There is an absence of peer-reviewed research understanding the enforcement strategies being adopted by local authorities to enforce Duty of Care in England, or similar regulations in other jurisdictions. This paper presents the results of collecting primary data from 267 local authorities in England (83.7% of the total) to analyse the waste collection services they offer to businesses, approach to enforcement of Duty of Care and use of EDOC. The results show an inconsistent approach across England with 49% of local authorities not offering any collection services to businesses, and 12% of local authorities not enforcing Duty of Care at all. There was variation in enforcement approaches including protocols, resourcing and issuing of Fixed Penalty Notices. There was low uptake in EDOC with only 2.5% of local authorities operating a business waste service using the system. Barriers to uptake included local authorities already operating their own system, business customers unable to manage the EDOC system, lack of internal resources, and preference for hard copies. The research highlights the need for a more consistent approach to tackle waste crime and improve resource flows as we strive to move towards a waste system based on Circular Economy principles.