Sustainable cycles and management of plastics: A brief review of RCR publications in 2019 and early 2020

Plastics have been playing a vital role in the industrialized economy, resulting in the growing amount of plastic waste and the surging attentions to plastics sustainability challenge. This is well reflected in the growing amount of submissions to and publications in Resources, Conservation, and Recycling on plastics, which made the editorial board decide to edit a Virtual Special Issue (VSI) on the “sustainable cycles and management of plastics” in 2018. The call for the VSI has attracted many submissions and twelve were accepted for publication. Together with several other relevant studies, we collected and summarized a total of 26 papers published in RCR mainly during 2019–2020 in this editorial. These papers mostly apply system approach and cover very wide topics such as material flows analysis and circular economy, life cycle assessment and eco-design, regional and global plastic emissions, and human consumption behavior. The whole collection of them offer a comprehensive view of the plastic waste challenges, as well as insights into achieving sustainability in plastic cycles and management. We believe these papers are helpful for government, industries, and individuals in exploring policy implications for building a more sustainable plastics system.