Environmental Geotechnics - Editorial

Sustainability means enabling the earth to continue supporting human life for future generations, and environment is included among its three pillars. From this perspective, the sustainable use of environmental resources has become one of the main goals of today’s global scientific community. From the recent European Green Deal to the USEPA Sustainability Plan, and including the Asian transition to net-zero emissions, global societies share common targets of implementing reuse practices and searching for innovative technical solutions to reduce overall waste generation, thus limiting landfilling and carbon emissions (ASPI, 2022; European Commission, 2021; USEPA, 2020).Environmental geotechnics can surely contribute to reach these goals, as it is a distinctive subject area that covers a wide range of environmental-related topics (Johnston and O’Kelly, 2014) such as geotechnical issues in landfill design and polluted soil and groundwater remediation, ground improvement techniques and the management of mine tailings and dredged sediments. The recent contribution of Roque et al. in the April 2022 issue of Environmental Geotechnics addresses several thematic areas discussing potential sustainable solutions and future improvements, such as the re-entry of construction and demolition waste, excavated materials, industrial waste and marine sediments into the production cycle, among others (Roque et al., 2022)