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Obtaining cellulose from recyclable waste paper contributes to the sustainability of forest resources, water and energy savings, and the reduction of environmental pollution. However, waste paper collected under inappropriate conditions for recycling can be degraded in a short time, thus becoming economically useless. This study examined the factors affecting source-separated collection processes of waste paper in Istanbul hotels, as well as the correlation among these factors. The economic value of the assumed benefits of source-separated waste paper was also calculated. To achieve these objectives, various inputs and methods were used, including the percent tabulation technique and the chi-square independence test. As a result, it was determined that 70% of managers and employees of Istanbul hotels were sensitive to recycling waste paper, but they were not aware of the entire benefits of waste paper recycling. It was also determined that because of waste paper recycling, 18 thousand trees, 5 million kWh of electricity, 3 thousand tons of water, and 1.3 thousand tons of fuel oil were saved, and the generation of 27 thousand tons of CO2 was prevented annually. Hotels in Istanbul provide the economy with an annual average of 752 tons of waste paper, which corresponds to 78% of the foreign trade deficit of Turkey's paper and paper products sector in the last five years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses issues pertaining to the future of work and sustainability through the lens of a case study of ecological deterioration and how it destroys and creates green jobs in a forest village of Istanbul. As elsewhere in major urban centres of developing countries, the hyper-expansion of city regions due to authoritarian developmentalism fosters the state-led construction sector in Turkey. Growth-driven economic policies continue to have adverse effects on the environment, resulting in deforestation among an array of ecological damage. Based on a qualitative analysis of oral history interviews and observations informed by a larger interdisciplinary research project, we observe resilience in the forest village under scrutiny as certain types of work are abandoned, and new forms are created by adaptation to the ecological and social conditions. The perceptions of changing conditions by locals vary across existing ethnic, gender, and class hierarchies in the local community. Moreover, our findings indicate that the types of work available in the village prior to urban transformation were not all decent or green. In face of ongoing ecological deterioration in a (formerly) forest community, participatory micro-initiatives, and grassroots, utilizing local community projects emerge that nevertheless pursue a green and just transition. We focus on one such initiative, the Community Fungi platform, to demonstrate the possibility of working towards a collective imagination of a green future inspired by past but unforgotten sustainable communal practices, in the context of the forest village under scrutiny in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the dawn of the 21st century, the rapid expansion of manufacturing plants and the widespread destruction of natural habitats significantly contributed to accelerating global warming. This phenomenon has led to severe droughts, irreversible agricultural damage, and substantial challenges in securing food supplies for the burgeoning global population. The alarming surge in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations underscores the urgent need to embrace clean energy technologies. To date, the primary goal of mankind is to develop innovative approaches to return Earth's ecology to its pre-industrial condition, as a century ago. The special issue (SI) in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy presents a collection of papers on photosynthetic and biomimetic hydrogen (H2) production, presented at the ‘Photosynthesis and Hydrogen Energy Research for Sustainability – 2023’ conference, held in Istanbul, Turkey, from 3–9 July 2023 (https://phrs-conference.com). The event was supported by the International Society of Photosynthesis Research (ISPR) and the International Association for Hydrogen Energy (IAHE). SI aims to deliver the latest insights into sustainable energy, with a particular emphasis on Biohydrogen and Artificial Photosynthesis. At the conference, nine promising young investigators were honoured with awards. Included herein are photographs capturing the conference's congenial atmosphere. We cordially invite you to the 12th International Meeting of ‘Photosynthesis and Hydrogen Energy Research for Sustainability – 2024’, honouring esteemed researchers John Allen (UK), Eva-Mari Aro (Finland), Ibrahim Dincer (Canada), Kazunari Domen (Japan), Elizabeth Gantt (USA), Andrey Rubin (Russia), and scheduled to take place in Turkey (13–19 October 2024). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the high necessity of medical face masks and face shields during the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare centers dealing with infected patients have faced serious challenges due to the high consumption rate face masks and face shields. In this regard, the supply chain of healthcare centers should put all of their efforts into avoiding any shortages of masks and shields as these products are considered as primary ways to prevent the spread of the virus. Since, any shortages in these products would lead to irrecoverable and costly consequences in terms of the mortality rate of patients and medical staff. Therefore, healthcare centers should decide on best supplier to supply required products, considering technical, and sustainability measures. Dynamicity and uncertainty of the pandemic are other factors that add up to the complexity of the supplier selection problem. Therefore, this paper develops a novel decision-making approach using Measuring attractiveness through a categorical-based evaluation technique (MACBETH) and a new combinative distance-based assessment method to address the supplier selection problem during the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to high uncertainty, vague and incomplete information for decision-making problems during the COVID-19 pandemic, the developed decision-making approach is implemented under fuzzy rough numbers as a superior uncertainty set of the traditional fuzzy set and rough numbers. Extensive sensitivity analysis tests are performed based on parameters of the decision-making approach, impacts of weight coefficients, and consistency of results in comparison to other MCDM methods. A real-life case study is investigated for a hospital in Istanbul, Turkey to show the applicability of the developed approach. Based on the results of MACBETH method, job creation and occupational health and safety systems are two top criteria. Results of the case study for five suppliers indicate that supplier (A1) is the best supplier with a distance score of 3.308. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Turkey, the transportation industry's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions increased by 147.1% between 1990 and 2019. Today, this transportation industry (i.e., freight and passenger) is among the significant contributors to greenhouse gas emissions in Turkey's megacities. Moreover, 65.43% of short-distance trips between home to work and home to school have been made by private automobiles in Istanbul and increasing concerns about environmental pollution have led practitioners to seek practical, robust, and effective solutions to reduce GHG emissions. Shared electric scooters have rapidly become popular for end-users and practitioners in megacities, depending on their valuable advantages. However, the rapid spread of micro-mobility, characterized by e-scooters, has also raised questions about this system's sustainability, suitability, and applicability. Thus, there are some critical and noteworthy gaps in this issue. This study investigates the factors affecting the suitable e-scooter selection for a sustainable urban transport system. Besides, it aims to develop a methodological framework for assessing the available e-scooter alternatives. For this purpose, a novel negotiation approach, a new form of the Delphi technique, was developed with the help of Fermatean fuzzy sets to identify the influential criteria. Also, the current paper presents a consensus-based MULTIMOORA (Multiple Objective Optimization on the basis of Ratio Analysis plus Full Multiplicative Form) decision-making model based on Fermatean fuzzy sets to address the appraisal problem concerning e-scooter selection. The current paper indicated that economic measures such as acquisition price and upkeep costs affect the e-scooter selection processes. In addition, an optimization model based on cross-entropy and dispersion measures is utilized to compute criteria weights. It highlighted that the costs of e-scooters are still high, and operators consider these criteria instead of the technical and operational features of the e-scooters. Finally, the validity check executed to test the robustness and trustworthiness of the model affirms the model's firmness and trustworthiness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Istanbul is one of the largest metropolitan cities in the World. The city has experienced rapid industrialization and urbanization in the second half of the twentieth century. Between 1950 and 2000, the city has grown by an average of 4.5% annually. Given the scale of the growth, neither local nor the central governments have shown capability of controlling the influx of migration, most of which settled illegally on public lands. Most of the settlements lack the basic sewerage facilities, and a significant portion of which are on the major water resource basins. As of today, Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IMM) not only has to cope with the infrastructure problems, but also has to find ways of solving the problem of illegal occupations of public lands and water resource basins. This paper presents the land use changes in the water resource basins providing water to the Istanbul Metropolitan Area. Using four consecutive Landsat images between 1990 and 2005, the changes in 12 different land use categories are obtained via overlay operations by GIS for water resource basins surrounding the City of Istanbul. It has been observed that the most critical land use changes are in the nearest basins to the city. The capability of Landsat and IKONOS images in determining the alterations in the macro form of the city are also discussed. Finally, possibility of utilization of new technologies in policy making regarding environmental management in Istanbul is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predicting medical waste (MW) properly is vital for an effective waste management system (WMS), but it is difficult because of inadequate data and various factors that impact MW. This study's primary objective was to develop an ensemble voting regression algorithm based on machine learning (ML) algorithms such as random forests (RFs), gradient boosting machines (GBMs), and adaptive boosting (AdaBoost) to predict the MW for Istanbul, the largest city in Turkey. This was the first study to use ML algorithms to predict MW, to our knowledge. First, three ML algorithms were developed based on official data. To compare their performances, performance measures such as mean absolute deviation (MAE), root mean squared error (RMSE), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), and coefficient of determination (R-squared) were calculated. Among the standalone ML models, RF achieved the best performance. Then, these base models were used to construct the proposed ensemble voting regression (VR) model utilizing weighted averages according to the base models' performances. The proposed model outperformed three baseline models, with the lowest RMSE (843.70). This study gives an effective tool to practitioners and decision-makers for planning and constructing medical waste management systems by predicting the MW quantity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines Eco-Schools Project, a specific work of green schools that includes standards about building, renovating, and maintaining schools as physical spaces. The study aims to find out what the principals of eco-schools are thinking about sustainability and schools' physical conditions, and how the schools are being shaped with the project. It is considered that the study will contribute to the limited literature on principals' perceptions about physical space conditions and how they can build a sustainable school in Turkey. The study was conducted with 14 eco-schools' principals in Istanbul. The data were collected by the interviews about sustainability and physical space, and two observations about sustainability and physical space. The method of the study is phenomenology, and the data evaluation techniques are content and document analysis. In conclusion, while sustainability is seen as a factor that maintains the ecosystem by protecting natural sources, school facilities are insufficient for maintaining sustainability due to a lack of physical and financial possibilities and participation. Additionally, inadequacies about Eco-Schools Project make sustainability processes more difficult. It is suggested that education stakeholders' should be encouraged giving responsibilities and collaboration to enhance their sustainability perceptions and physical space conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Belgrad Forest is one of the most visited forest areas in Istanbul and contains nine nature parks which are open to visitors and very popular. This study examines decision-making processes of the planning for these areas. To measure public participation in and approaches to the decision-making processes, a questionnaire was given to 1.103 visitors. It has been observed that the public does not participate in decision-making processes, although the public does have a role in legislation for the forest. Participants especially wanted to have input were determined to be ways of using the forest and ensuring that safety precautions and cleanliness were addressed. A SWOT analysis was carried out with the responsible groups and discussed approaches to planning, legislation, and implementation. The conclusion was that human pressure on nature parks should be reduced. It was suggested that non-governmental organizations should play an important role in decision-making mechanisms, as should individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The management of end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) is currently one of the most important ecological topics. The recycling process has essential importance for the environmental and economic sustainability of the ELV management. Istanbul has the highest rate of car ownership population in Turkey as well as an old vehicle fleet. There is a strong motivation to open an additional ELV recycling facility in this mega-city. Facility location is one of the crucial strategic problems for decision-makers. Addressing multi-criteria and highly uncertain nature of the ELV recycling facility location problem, this paper introduces a novel approach to support the facility location process. For the first time, an extension of the Additive ratio assessment (ARAS) method under the interval type-2 fuzzy environment is presented. The novel method is utilized for solving the ELV recycling facility location problem. The potentials and applicability of the presented interval type-2 fuzzy ARAS method are demonstrated throughout the real-life case study of Istanbul. The comparison with the available state-of-the-art interval type-2 fuzzy set based MCDM methods approves its validity and consistency. • An extension of the ARAS method under the interval type-2 fuzzy environment is presented. • The developed IT2F ARAS method is used to evaluate ELV recycling facility locations. • For the first time the ARAS method is applied in the waste management area. • A real-life case study of Istanbul is provided to illustrate the presented method. • The developed IT2F ARAS method can be applied to many other MCDM problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]