In the twentieth century, landfills were the designated places to dispose of things that people no longer needed or wanted. However, rising human populations have increased both competition for space and concerns regarding pollution. While industrial and domestic waste present societal and environmental challenges, there are also important opportunities associated with the recovery of materials destined for non-use or landfills. Since the early 2000s, there has been a growing emphasis on the reduction, reuse, and recycling of waste as a preferable alternative to the sanitary landfills of the twentieth century. These practices destabilize ideas of what constitutes waste material, whilst creating a space through which to consider the diversion of material from places designated for waste. As such, researchers are increasingly focused on the productive potential of waste as a social, cultural and material resource (Pickren 2014; Reddy 2015, Reno 2014).

Whereas the waste sector has made substantial contributions to the direct measurement, mitigation, and recovery of waste, social science and humanities scholars are theoretically and methodologically well-suited for contextualizing the decisions people make to reduce, reuse, recycle, or discard material considered ‘waste’ within a web of socio-cultural, economic, and geopolitical factors.

This Special Issue brings together scholars from the social sciences and humanities with waste management experts to incorporate a variety of voices and ideas typically left out of waste management discourse. We invite papers from multiple disciplines to engage with the topics of waste, wastage, wasting, waste-ability, rescue and salvage in relation to space and place. We are particularly interested in papers considering:

• Innovative social/technological solutions to mass waste;
• E-waste and the technologies we consume;
• The effects of space and scale on waste management
• How waste generates particular experiences of place and identity;
• Waste as an index of social relationships;
• The role of waste in the social construction of the places in which we live and work.

Guest Editors:
Mr. Gideon Singer
Dr Keri Chiveralls
Dr Kirrilly Thompson
Dr. H. Kory Cooper

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on our website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI’s English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

The manuscript submission date is September 1st, 2017.