Journal sections
The 4 thematic sections of Green and Sustainable Environments, what each one publishes, and what it returns without review.
Scope & structure
Green and Sustainable Environments publishes science, engineering and policy research on pollution, water, waste and resources, with particular attention to tropical and rapidly developing regions, where technology and governance together determine environmental outcomes. Studies may be grounded in a single place, but they must show what their findings mean beyond it.
The journal is organized in four sections. Each section states what it publishes, the topics it sees most often, and the kinds of manuscript it returns without review. Policy Analysis is an article type that cuts across all four.
Treatment and Resource Recovery
Processes and materials that remove, destroy or recover contaminants and resources from water, wastewater, soil, air and solid waste. The section covers physico-chemical, electrochemical, biological and nature-based treatment, as well as decentralized supply and treatment systems. Papers should explain why a process works, through mechanism, kinetics or a process model, and should test it under environmentally realistic conditions.
- Adsorbents from waste and biomass precursors
- Electrocoagulation and advanced oxidation
- Membrane and multi-media filtration
- Bioremediation and constructed wetlands
- Acid mine drainage treatment
- Nutrient and resource recovery
- Decentralized and rainwater-based water supply
- Materials synthesis without testing against the target contaminant at relevant concentrations
- Adsorption studies that report equilibrium data without kinetics, or kinetics without equilibrium data
- Cost or scale-up claims drawn from bench-scale results without pilot data or a validated model
- Performance reports with no comparison to established methods
Contaminants: Occurrence, Fate and Risk
Where contaminants come from, how they move and transform, and what risk they pose to ecosystems and people. The section covers emerging contaminants, microplastics, metals, pesticides and petroleum hydrocarbons across freshwater, marine, soil and atmospheric compartments. Monitoring data should support conclusions that hold beyond the sampling site and period, and exposure or toxicity studies should relate effects to concentrations found in the environment.
- Pharmaceuticals, PFAS and other emerging contaminants
- Microplastics
- Metals and metalloids
- Oil spills and marine pollution
- Source apportionment
- Exposure and ecological or human-health risk assessment
- Occurrence inventories from one site without a transferable conclusion
- Toxicity tests without positive and negative controls, or reporting nominal rather than measured concentrations
- Reviews that catalogue studies without analysing them
Environmental Monitoring, Spatial Analysis and Data Science
Methods and analyses that measure, map and model environmental systems: sensors and monitoring networks, remote sensing and GIS, environmental and hydrological modelling, and data-driven approaches. Spatial studies should answer an environmental question, such as where pollution, exposure or service gaps concentrate and why, rather than describe a map.
Required in this section: a statement, in the cover letter and in the Discussion or Conclusions, of which class of settings your study site represents and which findings are expected to transfer elsewhere.
- Low-cost sensors and monitoring networks
- Remote sensing of land, water and coastal change
- GIS-based siting, service-gap and exposure analysis for waste, water and sanitation infrastructure
- Air-quality and climate data analysis
- Environmental modelling with uncertainty analysis
- Machine learning applied to environmental data
- Descriptive mapping or site inventories without an analytical question
- Models without validation or uncertainty analysis
- New sensors not tested against reference methods on real environmental samples
Sustainable Systems and Circular Economy
System-level assessment of how materials, energy, water and carbon flow through production, consumption and waste management, and of how those systems can be made cleaner. The section covers life cycle and techno-economic assessment, material and substance flow analysis, circular economy and waste valorization at system scale, and carbon accounting and mitigation. Assessments should state functional units, system boundaries and the sensitivity of results to key assumptions.
Required in this section: a statement, in the cover letter and in the Discussion or Conclusions, of which class of settings your study site represents and which findings are expected to transfer elsewhere.
- Life cycle assessment of treatment and valorization routes
- Material and substance flow analysis
- Municipal and industrial solid-waste systems
- Circular strategies for agro-industrial residues
- Greenhouse-gas accounting and mitigation pathways
- Life cycle assessments without a defined functional unit, system boundary or sensitivity analysis
- Circular-economy concept papers without quantification
- Waste-generation surveys without system-level analysis
Handled by the Editor-in-Chief until a section editor for life cycle assessment and circular economy joins the board.
Policy Analysis
An article type, not a section: Policy Analysis papers are welcome in all 4 sections. Up to 7,000 words · peer reviewed · graphical abstract required.
Analyses at the interface of environmental science, engineering and public policy: evaluations of environmental regulations and standards, risk-based priority setting, cost–benefit and cost-effectiveness analyses, and assessments of market-based instruments such as carbon pricing and trading. Arguments must rest on quantitative or systematically gathered evidence, and must draw lessons that apply beyond the jurisdiction studied. Opinion and advocacy pieces belong under Perspective.
Required in this article type: a statement of which lessons apply beyond the jurisdiction studied, in the cover letter and in the Discussion or Conclusions.
Handled by the Editor-in-Chief until an editor for environmental policy, regulation or environmental economics joins the board.
Before you submit
Every manuscript is read against these 3 questions before it goes to review, whichever section it is submitted to.
Which pollution, water, waste or resource problem does the work address? A manuscript with no such problem at its centre is outside the scope of the journal, however sound the research is.
What holds beyond the study site and the study period? State it in one or two sentences, both in the cover letter and in the Discussion or Conclusions. It is welcome everywhere and required where the sections say so.
Required in Environmental Monitoring, Spatial Analysis and Data Science, Sustainable Systems and Circular Economy and Policy Analysis.
Are claims about performance, cost or policy supported by data at a matching scale? Bench-scale results do not support full-scale cost claims, and a single jurisdiction does not support a general policy recommendation.
Local studies, transferable findings. Studies based on a single site or region are welcome when the authors state which class of settings the site represents and which findings are expected to transfer to comparable settings elsewhere. Manuscripts that describe local conditions without such a statement will be returned without review.
The Editor-in-Chief currently holds two of these assignments. Manuscripts written or co-written by the Editor-in-Chief are handled and decided by another editor, and the identities of their reviewers are not disclosed to the Editor-in-Chief.
Word limits, manuscript structure and the submission checklist are on the author guidelines page. Editorial standards on authorship, data and misconduct are on the publication ethics page.