Medical waste management (MWM) system is one of the most important issues in the management of medical services and entails a high cost for those in charge of collecting and disposing of this type of hazardous materials. With increasing social awareness and greater knowledge of health and environmental issues, reducing raw material reserves and energy shortages along with increasing demand and urbanization led urban planners to find a way to optimally manage such wastes. Achieving this goal requires a comprehensive and holistic view of all the factors affecting MWM. Meanwhile, medical waste composition plays a significant role in choosing the efficient method for MWM.

On the other hand, countries are moving from a linear economy to a circular economy. This shift has reformed the current MWM development as well as industrial and economic developments. In a context of increasing pressure on strategic resources, the circular economy suggests to move away from using unique materials towards the application of waste materials to have an economic model that limits environmental impacts. Sustainable development, however, tries to keep tracking social aspects. Accordingly, there is a close relationship between MWM, circular economy, and sustainable development.

To address the above-mentioned requirements, this special issue entitled “Circular Economy Application in Designing Sustainable Medical Waste Management Systems” received 22 manuscripts between May 4, 2021, and September 4, 2021. Most of the submissions fell into the aforementioned research topics of this special issue. Particularly, seven manuscripts were accepted for publication in the Journal of Environmental Science and Pollution Research after providing the requested revisions by the authors where the average acceptance rate was 31.8%.

The published manuscripts thoroughly investigated the application of optimization and multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) to bring together current progress on the circular economy, sustainable development, and novel models and solution techniques which can contribute to a better understanding of the performances of MWM systems and provide useful practical strategies. The details of contributions are as follows:

  • An effective dynamic immune optimization control was examined by Li et al. (2021) for the wastewater treatment process.

  • A novel MCDM approach based on Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) models were suggested by Jafarzadeh Ghoushchi et al. (2022) to design sustainable MWM systems.

  • Risk and robustness of the MWM were evaluated through designing a viable waste chain network by Lotfi et al. (2021).

  • Mei et al. (2021) studied the disposal capacity bottlenecks under a novel coronavirus pneumonia outbreak to optimize a medical waste recycling network.

  • A time series model and Genetic Algorithm (GA) were employed by Safaei et al. (2022) to configure a multi-echelon multi-period closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) network focusing on the role of waste management.

  • Torkayesh et al. (2021) proposed a type-2 neutrosophic-based MCDM approach to analyze the failures in adoption of smart technologies for MWM systems. A review on water simulation models was conducted by Soleimanian et al. (2022) to address the nexus of water, energy, and food (WEF) along with waste treatment.