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Circular Plastics Economy

A Multidisciplinary Perspective

  • 1st Edition - November 6, 2025
  • Latest edition
  • Editors: Pooja Ghosh, Victor Carrasco Navarro, Sunil Kumar, Anna Lähde, Hanna Lehtimäki
  • Language: English

Circular Plastics Economy: A Multidisciplinary Perspective provides an understanding of the complex issues surrounding plastic waste management, including environmental challe… Read more

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Description

Circular Plastics Economy: A Multidisciplinary Perspective provides an understanding of the complex issues surrounding plastic waste management, including environmental challenges, risks associated with microplastic contamination, and the detection of micro- and nano-plastics. The book explores conventional and emerging technological solutions for plastic waste management, such as reusing, recycling, pyrolysis, and heterogeneous catalysis while also considering alternative approaches like biochar and microbe-based degradation that foster a holistic perspective on the transition towards a circular plastics economy.

With its multidisciplinary approach, this book provides an analysis of the challenges and opportunities associated with circular plastics economy, guiding the development of sustainable solutions on a global scale. By addressing these diverse perspectives, this book offers a guide for researchers and professionals interested in tackling the challenges of plastic waste to achieve a sustainable and circular approach to managing plastic waste.

Key features

  • Addresses circular economy solutions by providing a state-of-the-art knowledge on key scientific interventions for transitioning towards a circular plastics economy
  • Provides easy access to state-of-the-art findings and perspectives on circular economy and plastics from multiple scientific disciplines
  • Highlights environmental issues due to improper plastic waste management
  • Focuses on various technological interventions (both conventional and emerging) throughout the lifecycle of plastics to help achieve circularity

Readership

Researchers, scientists, and professionals interested in plastic contamination, plastic waste management and circular plastics economy across scientific disciplines such as environmental sciences and engineering

Table of contents

Section 1: Environmental issues related to plastic waste management

1. Plastic pollution and microplastic contamination as a global grand challenge

2. Chemical additives used in plastics and their risks

3. Understanding the characteristics, sources, potential impacts, and removal efficiencies of microplastics in wastewater treatment plants

4. Trophic transfer of microplastics and associated contaminants and human health risks

5. Detection of micro-and nano-plastics in complex environmental matrices

Section 2: Conventional and Emerging Technological solutions for plastic waste management

6. Recent trends in reusing and recycling plastic waste

7. Product designs for minimal use of plastics

8. Pyrolysis and incineration for plastic waste management

9. Landfilling of plastic wastes in developing countries

10. Heterogeneous catalysis for valorization of plastic waste

11. Biochar to remove micro-and nano-plastics

12. Microbe-based degradation of micro-and nano-plastics

Section 3: Multidisciplinary perspectives on circular plastics economy

13. Sustainability of bioplastics: A critique

14. Life cycle assessment of plastic waste management technologies

15. Social Scientists and offenders’ perspectives on circular economy of plastic waste in the Windhoek Correctional Service in Namibia: An Environmental Social Work Approach

16. Business and societal perspectives on circular plastics economy

17. Legal and policy environment for sustainable plastic circular economy

18. From local initiatives to global sustainable solutions in plastic recycling

Product details

  • Edition: 1
  • Latest edition
  • Published: November 6, 2025
  • Language: English

About the editors

PG

Pooja Ghosh

Pooja Ghosh did her Masters in Environmental Biology from University of Delhi, India followed by her doctorate in Environmental Microbiology and Biotechnology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. Her doctoral work involved risk assessment of landfill leachate from unengineered landfill sites and its treatment and detoxification. It contributed significantly in aiding policymakers, environmentalists, scientists, students, and most importantly, citizens, in realizing the problem of unengineered landfill sites of India. Currently, she is working as a DST-Inspire Faculty at Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India and carrying out her post-doctoral research on energy recovery from municipal solid wastes using bioreactor landfill technology and assessing the environmental profiles and greenhouse gas emissions in the bioreactor landfill and comparing it with the alternative waste management options used in India using Life Cycle Assessment methodology. Her broad research interests include Solid waste management, Bioremediation, Wastewater treatment, Toxicology, Life cycle assessment and sustainability. She has published in over 20 peer-reviewed journals and book chapters, being cited 385 times with an h index of 11 and an i10 index of 12. She is a reviewer of Bioresource Technology, Science of the total environment, Environmental Science and Pollution Research, Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety, Chemosphere and Journal of Environmental Management.
Affiliations and expertise
Assistant Professor, Centre for Rural Development and Technology Indian Institute of Technology Delhi.

VN

Victor Carrasco Navarro

Dr. Victor Carrasco Navarro conducted MSc studies in Chemistry Sciences at the Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain between 1994 and 2001. In 2007, he moved to the University of Eastern Finland in Joensuu to perform his PhD, which he obtained in 2013. His thesis dealt with the bioaccumulation, biotransformation and trophic transfer of PAHs in freshwater organisms. As a post-doc, he has been working in projects related to the ecotoxicity of neonicotinoids and microplastics and recently has obtained significant funding to research about the fate of plastic additives in the freshwater environment. His research interests are the fate of chemicals and anthropogenic litter in the environment, including their distribution, potential degradation, and transformation. The impacts that tire rubber pollution may have caused to the environment is a subject very important in his research interests. Currently, he is collaborating with research institutions in Spain, US, UK and India.
Affiliations and expertise
Project Researcher, Department of Environmental and Biological Sciences, University of Eastern Finland, Finland

SK

Sunil Kumar

Dr. Sunil Kumar is a well-rounded researcher with more than 20 years of experience in leading, supervising and undertaking research in the broader field of Environmental Engineering and Science with focus on Solid and Hazardous Waste Management. He has contributed extensively to these fields and has h-index of 30 and i10-index of 43 (Google scholar); highly impressive for a non-academic researcher from India. His contributions since inception at CSIR-NEERI in 200 include 130 refereed journal publications, 04 books and 25 book chapters, 08 Edited volumes and numerous project reports to various governmental and private, local and International academic /research bodies. The list of his collaborations is long and includes key Indian universities, such as IIT Kharagpur, IIT Delhi and IIT Mumbai and prestigious regional institutes, such as Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) and Kasetsart University in Bangkok, Hong Baptist University as well as universities in US (Columbia, Texas A&M) and Europe (UN University and University of Uppsala).
Affiliations and expertise
CSIR–National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, Nagpur, India

AL

Anna Lähde

Dr. Anna Lähde is an associate professor and leader of the Sustainable Materials Group at Fine Particle and Aerosol Technology Laboratory, Department of Environment and Biological Sciences, University of Eastern Finland. She was the recipient of the prestigious Academy of Finland Research Fellowship in the year 2017. Her research is focused on the development of sustainable materials for clean air and water applications. The studies include formation, preparation and characterization of the sustainable nano- and micron-sized materials using sustainable precursors. Her research also includes the analysis and toxicological effects of these materials and airborne particles. In her recent studies, she has focused on the synthesis of novel materials including carbon structures and graphene, superparamagnetic particles (e.g. iron and iron oxides) and catalytic materials (Au, Co) using aerosol processes and induction annealing.

Affiliations and expertise
Associate Professor and leader of the Sustainable Materials Group, Fine Particle and Aerosol Technology Laboratory, Department of Environment and Biological Sciences, University of Eastern Finland, Finland

HL

Hanna Lehtimäki

Dr. Hanna Lehtimäki is a professor of Innovation Management in Business School and a Director of Research Center for Sustainable Circular Economy at the University of Finland. Her research examines circular economy with theoretical frameworks on strategic management, organization theory, leadership, and entrepreneurship. She and her research team advance transdisciplinary social sciences research and societal impact in sustainability transition. Her research articles have appeared in academic journals internationally and she has authored books on strategic management and leadership. She holds leader positions in research consortiums examining circular economy in Finland and India in connection to microplastics, battery metals, and electric mobility. In her capacity as a Vice Director of UEF strategic research community Sustainable Resource Society: Circular Economy, Energy and Raw Materials, (www.uef.fi/en/rc-resource), she advances multidisciplinary social sciences research agenda for sustainability transition in business and society.

Affiliations and expertise
Professor of Innovation Management in Business School and a Director of Research Center for Sustainable Circular Economy, University of Finland, Finland

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